Why does Rebeca eat dirt in a hundred years of solitude

In the Netflix adaptation of One Hundred Years of SolitudeRebeca Buendía (Akima Moldonado) ate dirt frequently and there was no clear explanation why. One Hundred Years of Solitude is, as the name suggests, a tragedy that follows several generations of the Buendía family and their passage through the Colombian city of Macondo. It also features a literary style known as magical realism, so there are many moments where One Hundred Years of Solitude that are difficult to explain and extremely sad to watch. One of these moments is Rebeca's tendency to eat dirt.

Rebeca is one of the most confusing characters in One Hundred Years of Solitude. As a distant cousin of Úrsula Iguarán, she doesn't fit neatly into the Buendía family tree and it's not entirely clear where she came from. She also arrived in Macondo carrying a bag full of her parents' bones that she sometimes shook, which only made her feel strange. Perhaps the strangest thing about Rebeca is a habit that she carried into adulthood: eating dirt. One Hundred Years of Solitude didn't openly explain why Rebeca ate so much dirt, but there are a few reasons.

Rebeca has been eating dirt since she was a child

Rebeca probably started eating dirt because she was afraid of the Buendía family

Upon arriving at the Buendías' house, Rebeca began to eat dirt instead of food. Rebeca refused to eat any of the food that Úrsula prepared for her, probably because she was afraid of being placed in a new family that she had never met before. It seems that Rebeca started eating dirt because she was hungry, but she didn't trust the Buendía family enough to eat her food.. Only after Úrsula forcibly fed soup to Rebeca did she finally stop eating dirt, at least for a while.

As with everything in One Hundred Years of Solitudethere are also layers of metaphors for each literal action in the story. In addition to satisfying her hunger, eating dirt probably helped Rebeca feel closer to her late parents.. Dirt is often associated with death and the dead, and there is probably some significance to the fact that Rebekah's parents were not buried and instead their bones were placed in a bag. Rebeca's tendency to eat dirt likely symbolizes how the pain of a significant death, like the one Rebeca experienced, can follow a person throughout their life.

Rebeca eats dirt as an adult when she is distressed

Eating dirt is probably an unhealthy way to deal with stress for Rebeca

After Rebeca became an adult, her habit of eating dirt returned. When she couldn't be with Pietro Crespi (Ruggero Pasquarelli) at the family party, Rebeca ran out into the courtyard and went back to eating dirt. As the narrator explained: “the handfuls of dirt made her feel closer to the only man worthy of such a display of degradation.” It seems that as an adult, Rebeca ate dirt because it was an unhealthy way of dealing with stress.. It is possible that eating dirt was even a form of self-mutilation for Rebeca, and that degrading herself helped her calm down.

The moments in which Rebeca returned to eating dirt corroborate the idea that it was a method of self-mutilation. Rebeca often ate dirt when her relationship with Pietro began to deteriorate, such as when the wedding was postponed and when José Arcadio returned home. She also returned to eating dirt after José Arcadio was murdered at the end of One Hundred Years of Solitudewhich was yet another moment that caused him extreme pain. Rebeca's tendency to eat dirt appears to be one of the many negative consequences that the Buendía family suffered in One Hundred Years of Solitude.