Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Essay

Chronicle of a Death Foretold Reflective Statement

While reading and analyzing Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Garcia Marquez my opinions of Latin American culture have drastically changed. Before I read Chronicle of a Death Foretold I thought that 1950’s Colombia was a wild place with not much civilization or maybe a place of civil unrest, but instead I read about a place that processed typical 1950’s technology and was civilized. However, I also realized that 1950’s Colombian culture was a culture that appeared only modern on the outside, modern in terms of infrastructure but still held on to old almost ancient beliefs. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold Marquez highlights the murder of a man, Santiago Nasar, who did not know why he was being murdered. It was an honor killing caused by shame and accusations, there was no real evidence that he committed the “crime” of deflowering Angela Vicario before her wedding. Since I’m a U.S. Citizen born in 1999, not a Colombian from 1950. I cannot fully understand how important virginity and honor were to the Vicario family. Obviously it was so sacred to them that they were willing to kill to save their honor, but to me this is still an enigma to me because I was raised in a time where virginity is still somewhat prized but no one is going to kill someone else over it;

Before reading Chronicle of a Death Foretold I’ve heard of Magical realism and now after reading I aspire now to try to incorporate the straight forwardness and the absurdness of magical realism in my fictional works. Marquez’s use of magical realism in Chronicle of a Death Foretold adds a subtle ultra-descriptive layer to his writing that could not be achieved without it. The grotesqueness he uses highlights the brutality of honor killing and forces the reader to feel the pain Santiago Nasar must have felt as the Vicario brother butchered him like a