Chronicle of a death foretold

Chronicle of a death foretold

Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a

fictitious novel. It was originally written in Spanish but was later

translated to English.

The story began on the morning of Santiago Nasar’s murder. We are

being told the story in first person view by an unnamed narrator who

has witness the events that occurred. I think there is a surreal and

repetitive tone; I get the feeling that the narrator is investigating

the murder because we are told the story years later from an

omniscient point of view and all the characters’ thoughts are shared.

There were two main themes that I noticed. The main theme was how

unpowerful the women are in the story. This is shown when Marquez

writes

"The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls were brought up to

be married.”

This excerpt shows the severity of the lives women lead in the

reserved Colombian culture of the town. A woman's worthiness as a wife

was measured by her beauty in conjunction with her ability to

gracefully run all aspects of a household. The idea that the woman in

a marriage is expected to suffer is significant-no woman enters

marriage expecting to be happiness unless she is fortunate enough to

love whichever man decides to court her. In this Spanish culture,

unlike Western culture, marriage is not based on love.

There is also the importance of cultural traditions like honor. The

twin brothers murder Santiago Nasar because he took their sister’s

virginity away. Also, I became aware the there in an emphasis on the

dream that Santiago had, with the trees and the weather on the day he

was murdered. Some recalled that it rained and some said that it was

sunny.

One technique used in the story as a motif as magic realism. This is

the incorporation of fantastic or mythical into realistic fiction. I

noticed that Marquez keeps on repeating the murder before it occurred,

this helped to build suspense.

From the second chapter I understood that the narrator implies that

Santiago is innocent for the crime he dies for. But if he is innocent,

then who took Angela Vicario’s virginity?

The brutality of the social conventions surrounding women becomes

clear in this chapter. Because she was not a virgin when she married,

not only is Angela abandoned by her husband, but she is beaten by her

mother. The double standards of her culture are highlighted by the

fact that the narrator, Santiago and some other friends are all at a

whorehouse doing whatever they please.

This novel reminded me of the difficulty of understanding events.