Chapter 10 Summary

Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo are identical twins, so alike in body, mind, and action that even their mother Santa Sofia de la Piedad is unable to distinguish them. They enjoy sitting opposite from each other at table and simultaneously using opposite hands for similar tasks, conveying an image of one boy looking into a mirror. They delight in the confusion and deliberately present themselves as each other until Ursula, now over one hundred years old, becomes convinced even they do not know the truth of their personal identity.

Thus, Aureliano Segundo grows to enormous size in his adulthood and becomes lazy and dissipated, playing the accordion, and studying the secrets of alchemy in the ancient laboratory of Melquiades. On the other hand, Jose Arcadio Segundo grows to be a bony, thin adult who never amounts to much. Early in life Jose...