One Hundred Years of Solitude

The motif of the house’s decay recurs in the text, especially after the narrative turning point of the five-years-long rain. The house grows over time to reflect the growing fortunes of the family. Great houses represent the family that created them, and they are intended to last for generations, housing successive generations of the same family. The physical decay of the great family house represents the moral decay of the family that created it. When Úrsula Iguarán is alive, she ensures the upkeep of the family home, and in doing so she also keeps the family together. However, even in the first generation, fears of incest—which represents moral decay—appear. When these fears come to fruition five generations later, nature is already in the process of reclaiming the house. Although time is fluid in the text, nature represents a moral law with tenets that cannot be broken. When the family goes against the rules Úrsula passes down to them of the Christian God and of nature by intermarrying and producing offspring, their lineage and the house that contained them can no longer exist.