Death Foretold Symbolism

Gabriel García Márquez riveting narrative known as Chronicle of a Death Foretold takes apart an enigmatic culture that Marquez has experienced in his lifetime. A culture that Marquez conjures up in the novela is based on one that has an inadequate moral compass, justice system, and religious order. The culture depicted has a foundation of machismo, gossip, secrecy, honor, and misplaced pride. Marquez uses scenes of violence to depict the inner demons of the culture of mid 20th century colombia in a small coastal town and how their is a sense of corruption in people that they can have even if they are not directly involved with the actions of cruelty. All throughout the novel Marquez uses various symbols and allegory to visualize to the reader

When Angela is wed to Bayardo san Roman and he finds out that she is no longer a virgin, he decides to leave her. Furious about Angela being dishonored, her brothers Pablo and Pedro plan to kill Santiago and announce it to the whole town. From there on Santiago is then murdered, but at this point it is not important how he was murdered but what led to his death and how the death of Santiago could have been avoided. The final seconds of Santiago's life depict not only a death of an individual, but can also be an allegory for the death of morals in the community. In the passage Santiago's family is in shock and his aunt Wene exclaims “Santiago,my son...What has happened to you”(120) showing her shock and horror.This scene contains irony because it shows how the many people around santiago knew what was going to happen to him but did not take upon precautionary measures to protect him. The apparent shock shows how an outsider or someone who was not engaged to the information of the murder would react towards the death of Santiago. An interesting thing was that even though people knew about Santiago's murder many people from the community did not take more crucial steps to try to protect Santiago and prevent the Vicario brothers from enacting their

Marquez was effective in using manners of symbolism behind the violence and how there was ways in which the murder of Santiago Nasar and aspects of his death can be seen as an allegory to a greater social commentary upon a culture. The gory images that Marquez presented in Nasar’s murder can also be expressed as to unravel the more darker and unpleasant side of the people in the community. The reason why Marquez portrays the people of the town through the murder of Santiago Nasar is to show how the culture operated mostly on vain ideals of honor and reckless vengeance and to add on top of that there was rarely a sense of urgency to attempt to prevent the Vicario brothers to execute their plan to kill Santiago among the citizens of the coastal town. It was also a sense of machismo that participated in the death of Santiago and how also honor was so important to the inhabitants that it meant death to an individual if it meant they have dishonored someone. In the big picture what Gabriel Garcia Marquez is trying to convey is that there are inner demons within in individuals even though they are not directly involved in any malicious