Death Foretold Gender

In a world where people are expected to act a certain way, some people can be pushed too far and end up doing things that they may regret or that may hurt them. In the book Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, a man is murdered while the entire town looks on. The two men who murder him are pinned by a code of machismo and societal expectations that force them to kill him. They continue to defend their crime because it was a matter of honor and they are affected by this their entire lives. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, Pedro and Pablo Vicario are victims of gender-based societal expectations in order to illustrate how such expectations can confine people to a set of actions or principles that

may lead them to act in ways they disagree with or that may endanger them.
In the time period and the town in which the story takes place, men and women are raised very differently. There is an idea of "machismo," or manliness, which the men are raised to follow and uphold, while the women were raised to serve the men. While the narrator is describing the Vicario family, he states "The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to get married." (Márquez 31) This shows how society views boys and girls differently and how they are raised to conform to these expectations. Later on in the same chapter, the narrator's mother says of the Vicario girls "Any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer." (Márquez 31) Showing that the girls were raised to serve and put up with the men, who were often rude or abusive. The women were expected to do all of the housework as well. This society confines the characters to a set of expectations that pressure the characters to act based on what society wants rather than what they may want to do.
The twins use this code of honor and expectation to justify the murder, and the town and the society around them accepts it. After committing the murder, the twins immediately go to the town church to tell Father Amador. They defend themselves before the Father, stating "'We killed him openly, but we're innocent.' (...) 'Before God and before men, it was a matter of honor." (Márquez 49) They say it was a matter of honor, as Santiago had supposedly "taken their sister's honor" or virginity, even though he did not actually have a relationship with her. In this society, murder is considered acceptable when done in the context of honor. The brothers said in front of the court that they "would have done it again a thousand times over for the same reason." (Márquez 48) They are upholding the code of machismo and the running theme of honor by defending their sister and are not afraid to show this in front of the court. Everyone seems to be okay with the murder because of the motive, and the twins get out of long prison sentences and public shame because of their openness about the acceptable motive. The narrator notes that "In the panopticon of Riohacha, where they spent three years awaiting trial because they couldn't afford bail, the older prisoners remembered them for their good character and sociability, but they never noticed any indication of remorse in them." They seem to feel as though their killing another man is justified with these reasons.
One could infer from the way Pedro and Pablo Vicario act throughout the story that they did not actually want to kill Santiago but instead felt as though they were forced to.

They seem to stall and try to stop the killing from happening throughout the morning but are unsuccessful and have to kill Santiago in the end. The narrator says that when interviewing Clotilde Armenia, the owner of the milk shop, she stated the brothers "looked at him more with pity," as though they felt sorry for what they were about to do. Perhaps they felt more compelled by the expectations of society to kill him than by their own motives. Later, the Colonel takes the twins' knives away and tells Clotilde Armenta it was so they had no weapons to kill with, but she says to him "That's not why. It's to spare those poor boys from the horrible duty that's fallen on them." (Márquez 57) She also says she had sensed "the Vicario brothers were not as eager to carry out the sentence as to find someone who would do them the favor of stopping them." (Márquez 57) Clotilde seems to have pity on the boys for what they must do. She knows they are being pressured to carry out the task of killing their friend for their sister's "lost honor," but she knows they do not want to do it. The brothers seem to have warned everyone in the town of the murder, but no one takes them seriously. The people who do take them seriously, namely Clotilde Armenta and Luisa Santiaga, do not carry enough authority and cannot convince

those with enough authority to do anything about it. The narrator states that it seems as though Pedro and Pablo Vicario "had done much more than could be imagined to have someone stop them from killing him, and they had failed." This illustrates the great effort the brothers went to to be stopped from carrying out the murder. They were pressured by societal and gender expectations to kill their friend, and no one would stop them before it was too late.
Pedro and Pablo are victims of societal and gender based expectations in order to show how such expectations can force a person to act in ways that they regularly would not or in ways that might endanger them.

Pedro and Pablo were raised in a society in which machismo and honor are upheld as great moral codes. They are raised to follow these codes and are compelled by them to ultimately kill their friend for their sister's "lost honor." The society around them seems to be okay with the murder on the basis of the motive, honor. The boys, though, seem to feel sorry for their actions and seem to suffer because of what they were compelled by societal expectations to do. Forcing people into boxes based on their gender and what their society expects can change them for the worse and force them to do things that may not necessarily be good. As a whole, society in general should be cautious of the way it persuades or forces people to think and act and how it could affect

others.