One Hundred Years of Solitude: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

When Remedios Moscote gets her menstrual period, she and Aureliano Buendía are married by Father Nicanor Reyna in the parlor of the house. At the ceremony, Remedios Moscote proves calm and composed, while everyone else is quite nervous. She takes the first piece of wedding cake to José Arcadio Buendía, still tied to the chestnut tree. The only unhappy person at the wedding is Rebeca, who had been set to marry Pietro Crespi on the same day. But just before, Pietro Crespi receives a letter that his mother is about to die. He hurries to the capital, missing his mother on the road, who is perfectly well. The writer of the letter remains unknown, but Amaranta is suspected.

The priest, appalled that the people of Macondo are living without proper religion, decides to stay for another week to do God’s work, but the people tell him they are not in need of a priest, having gone without for this long. The priest decides to build a church. He begs for support and holds an open-air mass, promising proof of the power of God. He drinks a cup of chocolate and rises six inches above the ground, repeating the demonstration for several days. These demonstrations earn him enough money in a month that he can begin the construction of the church. José Arcadio Buendía is unimpressed, responding in his gibberish, which the priest recognizes as not gibberish, but Latin.

Father Nicanor Reyna tries to prove the existence of God to José Arcadio Buendía and José Arcadio Buendía tries to disprove God to the priest. The priest challenges José Arcadio Buendía to a game of checkers, but José Arcadio Buendía says there is no point in competing in a contest to which the two competitors have agreed upon the rules. The priest, believing José Arcadio Buendía to be quite lucid, asks why he is tied to the tree, and José Arcadio Buendía says it is because he is crazy. The priest returns to building the church and doesn’t visit José Arcadio Buendía again.

Rebeca’s hopes of marriage are revived once Pietro Crespi has returned, but Amaranta suggests that Rebeca wait until the church is built, a process that Rebeca believes might take ten years. Pietro Crespi, too, is disappointed by the delay. The two lovers are found by Úrsula, kissing in the dark, and Úrsula dedicates herself to supervising their future visits. After three months of agony, Pietro Crespi donates the money Father Nicanor needs to finish the church. Amaranta removes the mothballs protecting Rebeca’s dress, but Amparo Moscote says she can sew a new dress in a week. Amaranta resolves to poison Rebeca’s coffee.

Remedios Moscote wakes in the middle of the night, soon after, and dies, perhaps of a miscarriage of the twins inside of her. At this news, Amaranta thinks better of her plan to poison Rebeca, feeling responsible for Remedios Moscote’s death. Remedios Moscote had been a joyful presence in the house, caring for José Arcadio Buendía and accepting the son of her husband and Pilar Ternera, Aureliano José as her own. Remedios Moscote and Aureliano Buendía had made a very content life for themselves. Úrsula institutes a mourning period. She hangs the daguerreotype of Remedios Moscote on the wall with a lamp. Out of guilt, Amaranta adopts Aureliano José as her own. Pietro Crespi visits Rebeca, but she is distraught over another delay of the wedding, and begins eating dirt again.

A huge man arrives to the Buendía house, covered in tattoos. He proceeds through the house, greeting everyone nonchalantly. Only Úrsula recognizes him as her son José Arcadio (I). When they ask where he has been, he responds only, “Out there.” He sleeps for three days and then goes to Catarino’s store to celebrate. He displays his genitals and the women vie for his attention. He offers to sleep with them all if they can pay him ten pesos each, an extraordinary price. He has been around the world sixty-five times making his living in this way. He is not embraced by the family because of his crudity, though Úrsula tries to reconnect with him.

Rebeca, though, is attracted to José Arcadio (I)’s masculinity. He recognizes that Rebeca has become a woman since he last saw her. With the sexual tension between them, Rebeca begins to eat dirt again. One afternoon, while the rest of the family is sleeping, she goes to José Arcadio and they have sex. Three days later they are married, after José Arcadio breaks the news to Pietro Crespi that he will marry Rebeca, despite her being his sister. Father Nicanor reveals that José Arcadio and Rebeca are not in fact biological sister and brother, but Úrsula refuses to allow the newlyweds in the house. They rent a house and, on their wedding night, a scorpion bites Rebeca, but they make love all night anyway. Aureliano Buendía brings them some furniture and money.

Pietro Crespi continues to visit the Buendía house, and he and Amaranta seem to be initiating a romance. Pietro Crespi asks Amaranta to marry him, and she agrees, but not until they know each other better. Úrsula is confused at this response, but Aureliano Buendía agrees it is not the time for a wedding. The death of Remedios Moscote has caused him to be angry and solitary instead of sad. Don Apolinar Moscote tells Aureliano that the Liberals want to go to war, because they are bad people who want to “hang priests, to institute civil marriage and divorce, to recognize the rights of illegitimate children as equal to those of legitimate ones, and to cut the country up into a federal system that would take power away from the supreme authority.” The Conservatives, he says, have been given their power by God and want to protect morality.

Aureliano Buendía sympathizes with the Liberal point of view, but he can’t imagine fighting over ideals. Before an election, soldiers confiscate the weapons from every house when distributing the ballots and alcohol sales and gathering are prohibited. Everyone submits their ballots and Don Apolinar Moscote seals the box, but that night they break the seal and take out all but ten of the Liberal ballots, tilting the election in favor of the Conservatives. Aureliano warns that this will prompt the Liberals to go to war. The result of the election has no impact on the town, but the failure of the soldiers to return people’s weapons makes them angry.

Soon after, when Gerineldo Márquez and Magnífico Visbal ask Aureliano Buendía if he is Liberal or Conservative, he says that he is a Liberal because “Conservatives are tricky.” Aureliano goes to see a doctor, at the urging of his friends, to treat a pain in his liver. The doctor is a charlatan and former terrorist, who had convinced the youth of Macondo to vote to prove that elections were a farce and violence was necessary to attain their ideals. The doctor tells Aureliano that it’s his duty to assassinate Conservatives and Aureliano tells the doctor how his father-in-law rigged the election. The doctor shows Aureliano all the people he believes must be killed to exterminate Conservatism, and Aureliano thinks the doctor is “nothing but a butcher.”

Aureliano Buendía promises he will not reveal the secret plan, though he won’t participate. When they go to murder the Moscote family, though, he guards the door. Arcadio, an adolescent now, tells Aureliano of the way the Liberal ideology has spread amongst his classmates. In December, Úrsula announces the news that war has broken out, though she is late, as martial law has been in effect for the whole country for three months. The soldiers ransack the houses for weapons again and execute the doctor, injuring and killing the priest and a mad woman in town. Aureliano realizes that Don Apolinar Moscote is just a figurehead now, that the army is who is really in charge.

Aureliano Buendía goes to the house of Gerineldo Márquez and tells him they will go to war to prevent this destruction. They conduct an operation in which they invade the garrison and steal the Conservatives’ weapons, executing the captain and four soldiers. Arcadio is named the civil and military leader of Macondo. Aureliano guarantees that Don Apolinar Moscote and his family will remain safe and asks that he call him Colonel Aureliano Buendía from now on.