Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Literary Analysis

In the novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcìa Márquez does not follow the typical nonlinear structure of a conventional chronicle. By doing so Marquez is able to focus on the villagers and their tendency to be silent and not speak up about the threats they hear. The main threat of the novel was towards Santiago Nasar. Angela Vicario accused him of taking her virginity and for that reason her two twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario are out to kill Nasar. Through the villagers acquiescence, although they did not kill Nasar themselves, they did play a prominent role in his death by not making an effort to communicate with him the rumors they heard about the Vicario twins plan to kill him.

Directly from the beginning of the novel Márquez informs the audience that the twins are going to kill Nasar.

As more people are informed, the closer to the time of Nasar’s death. When the Vicario twins go to the butchers to “sharpen [their] knives”, no one believes that they are actually going to kill Nasar when they say “We’re going to kill Santiago Nasar” because they “thought it was a drunkard's’’ baloney”, except Faustino Santos. (51 and 52) Santos “perceived a glimmer of truth in [the]... threat”,which is why he reported it to a policeman. (53) Although the policeman did take the knives from them, they just went to get new ones. Clotilde Armenta, did want to have the twins arrested, but Colonel Aponte said that “No one is arrested just on suspicion”, even though the twins were wandering around telling everyone th eir plan.(57) In fact, they “had told their plans to more than a dozen people” except for the one person who needed to know and life was on the line- Santiago Nasar. (58) Despite that some villagers did try to warn Nasar, most of them assumed that he knew, since at this point of the novel it seemed like everyone knew apart from Nasar