cut this out->(This paper got a 95% in a 12th grade english class. It is about how the characters in the novel tkaeon animal characteristics, etc.)

When Ursula says, "If we go on like this we'll be devoured by animals" (Marquez 309), it's as if she's looking into the future of the Buendia family. The future of the family, however, is not just to be devoured by the conventional animal, but also by other things taking the form of an animal.

It rains for four years, eleven months and two days (Marquez 291) and during that time, everything was constantly damp and that created the perfect environment for moss and weeds the grow everywhere. These intruders destroyed the house, and most of the town. Along with all of these plants came insects, and these insects also began the break down the house further. Unlike the plants, when the rains stopped, the insects didn't go away. After finding a trunk full of cockroaches (Marquez 309), Ursula began an all out war on the insects. She would sweep them off the porch, use quicklime, bug spray and all sort of bug bombs. As much as she tried though, the bugs would just keep coming back. Eventually she died, and the bugs began to take back the house. When Amaranta Ursula comes back, she finds Aureliano sitting in a house that's infested with bugs, so much so that the house is barely standing anymore. Most of the rooms are broken down and filled with spider webs.

Besides having the bugs eating the family's house away, Ursula's prophecy comes true literally in the case of Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula's baby. Aureliano comes back and find his baby in a basket, and he has been devoured by ants. Of course, the newborn baby had been left there, unattended for at least a couple of days, so he was probably already dead, but the ants finished him off.

Aureliano and Amaranta Ursula are also devoured by animals, but of a different sort. They are devoured by the animals of passion. They become so wrapped up in their own lives, and the pleasure they bring each other that they let everything go to hell around them. The house falls apart, and any life outside of the house is neglected. Aureliano doesn't keep up his letters to his friends, Amaranta Ursula blows off Gaston, and they become wrapped up completely in themselves.

In the end, no one from the Buendia family survives and most of that has to do with the insects. They eat everything until people begin to give up and move off. The insects are still a small part, however, of all of the other things that go wrong. So much happens in Macondo that by the end of the story, there are probably no more than 10 people living in the town, and when the cyclone blows them away, there probably won't be anyone to remember them. Colonel Buendia is just a myth, the banana company was never there and every one related to the family died in one way or another. The town of Macondo once proud, was devoured by the animals of misfortune.