In the novel, Rebecca arrives in Macondo with symptoms of insomnia plague. The plague spreads throughout the Macondo which leads to loss of memory. In the novel, "no one was alarmed at first they were happy at not sleeping." Sleeping is considered a, "useless habit." Vistacion, the Indian servant told everyone that this insomnia will further lead to amnesia, which is loss of memory. The memories begin to erase the past and past lives of people from their minds and they also forget the names and identity of people and awareness of their own being. Gradually they forget everything. The plague removes the collective memory of entire community and leaves them in a state of, "purposelessness". People lose their identity. They lose the sense of who they were and acted according to the signs and labels, which were put on different things. As a solution, Jose Aracadio Buendia writes the names and use of things on pieces of papers and pastes them onto those things. For example: "The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was. This is a cow. She must be milked in the morning so that she will produce milk, and milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk." The memory machine tries to provide a solution for memory loss. They did not who they were and thus future was meaningless without a past." L Ahsan says that "The self can only be established once it's predetermined position and status in the socio-historical network has been internalized. The sacredness of the other and the other world is vital for the survival of a tradition (3). "Memory renders order and defines, "the self as well as the other." Self identities and identities of others are forgotten. The family member is identified by a mere description, "Where a father was remembered faintly as a dark man who had arrived at the beginning of April and a mother was remembered only as the dark woman who wore a gold ring on her left hand.
