How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
Then [Colonel Aureliano Buendía] made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away and he could not find it. On another occasion, he felt at least a confused sense of shame when he found the smell of Úrsula on his own skin, and more than once he felt her thoughts interfering with his. But all of that had been wiped out by the war. Even Remedios, his wife. at that moment was a hazy image of someone who might have been his daughter. The countless women he had known on the desert of love and who had spread his seed all along the coast had left no trace in his feelings. Most of them had come into his room in the dark and had left before dawn, and on the following day they were nothing but a touch of fatigue in his bodily memory. The only affection that prevailed against time and the war was that which he had felt for his brother José Arcadio when they both were children, and it was not based on love but on complicity. (9.54)
Check out the transference going on in this passage. Wife to daughter, one-night-stand to fatigue, and even brotherly love to shameful aiding and abetting. The disappearance of love means the dissolving of relationships, to the point that even in Buendía's memory (which in theory deals with facts at least as much as emotions), he can't quite connect people with their roles.
Quote #5
In that way the three of them continued living without bothering each other. Aureliano Segundo, punctual and loving with both of them, Petra Cotes, strutting because of the reconciliation, and Fernanda, pretending that she did not know the truth (11.16)
What does it mean to Aureliano Segundo to "love" both of these women? Why is the companion adjective to "loving" "punctual"? Isn't that a strange juxtaposition?
Quote #6
The relationship of jolly comradeship was born between father and daughter [ . . . ]. Aureliano Segundo postponed any appointments in order to be with Meme, to take her to the movies or the circus, and he spent the greater part of his idle time with her. [ . . . ] The discovery of his daughter restored his former joviality and the pleasure of being with her was slowly leading him away from dissipation. [Petra Cotes] was so annoyed with the comradeship between her lover and his daughter that she did not want anything to do with her. Petra was tormented by an unknown fear, as if instinct were telling her that Meme, by just wanting it, could succeed in what Fernanda had been unable to do: deprive her of a love that by then she considered assured until death. (14.5)
We're digging the comparison between romantic and filial love here. Both kinds of love provide companionship, at least in this situation, where Aureliano Segundo has Petra for wild and crazy party time and Meme for just hanging out. And both kinds of love come with a built-in future. But while sexual love ends with death, as Petra realizes, filial love implies a future beyond death and into the next generation.