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Literary devices in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Literary devices in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
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In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel García Márquez uses the religious symbolism, allusions, and imagery to reveal the purpose of Santiago Nasar’s death; as the society’s sacrificial lamb.
Marquez places biblical allusions in the names of the characters to further illustrate the connection to religion. The Vicario brothers, Pablo and Pedro, are to be viewed as allusions to Peter and Paul. Peter indirectly killed Jesus by denying Christ three times before the cocks crowed. This is similar to Pablo’s actions because although he was not responsible for the murder of Santiago, he denied Nasar a chance of repenting before the morning, the crowing of the cocks. Poncio, the father of Angela, is a symbolic reference to Pontius Pilate. He permitted his sons to kill; similar to Pontius Pilate, who allowed the crucifixion of Christ. Santiago’s own name parallels to that of Jesus. His first name Santiago, is a derivative of Saint, which suggests divinity and holiness. His last Nasar is a reference to Nazareth, as in Jesus of Nazareth.
On the day of his death, “Santiago put on a shirt and pants of white linen” (Marquez 5). White is the color of innocence in many cultures, thus this choice is no coincidence. His decision of clothing represents the innocence of Santiago Nasar. While he was not a symbol of purity or of naivety due to his many vices, Santiago represented true guiltlessness. Nasar was unjustly accused of stealing Angela Vicario’s virginity. Throughout the novel it is kept a mystery who the real culprit was but the haphazardness of Angela’s choice was made clear. Marquez explained it “ she found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names from this world and the other , and she nailed it to...
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...d in order to be for humans to be forgiven of their sins. The deaths of these innocent men cleanse the individuals of their transgressions. The societies allowed these men to die in order to remove their wrongdoings. Santiago would have only mocked the honor system if he would have continued living. Jesus challenged the traditions of the existing church by claiming that he was the son of God. They died to hold up the traditional beliefs of their cultures. He is able to efficiently display the destruction and construction of cultural traditions through the comparison of these two men and the events revolving their deaths.
Hence, Santiago Nasar died in order to serve as his society’s sacrificial lamb. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is able to develop this message in Chronicle of a Death Foretold by incorporating a multitude of theological symbols, imagery, and allusions.
García, Márquez Gabriel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Gregory Rabassa New York: Knopf, 1983. Print.
...all want to believe that the crime was truly “foretold”, and that nothing could have been done to change that, each one of the characters share in a part of Santiago Nasar’s death. Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the true selfishness and ignorance that people have today. Everyone waits for someone else to step in and take the lead so something dreadful can be prevented or stopped. What people still do not notice is that if everyone was to stand back and wait for others, who is going to be the one who decides to do something? People don’t care who gets hurt, as long as it’s not themselves, like Angela Vicario, while other try to reassure themselves by thinking that they did all that they could, like Colonel Lazaro Aponte and Clotilde Armenta. And finally, some people try to fight for something necessary, but lose track of what they set out for in the first place.
Just as Santiago gave into his assailants the biblical Christ never fought against the will of the people in Jerusalem and in the end, all the people of Jerusalem came to see Jesus on the cross for they knew that they were at fault. Also like Christ, Santiago received stabbings “through the palm of his right hand” (Márquez 117) as well as “a horizontal slash across the stomach” (Márquez 119). Santiago wore white linen at the time of his death, to symbolize the innocence and purity o...
Between Vega’s “The Story of Pedro Serrano” and Saer’s The Witness, each character discovered their own truths and purpose in life. For Serrano, his was the journey to achieve the balance between nature and civilization and twisting it for his own benefit much like he did with the resources on the island. For the nameless narrator, his journey was to gain the identity of what would end up a lost civilization and share their story with the world, ensuring that they would live on and be understood.
...eying his influence, not necessarily love. Dignity was also a centralized theme in which the entire plot was based upon. Angela striped her family’s integrity from them when she slept with Santiago and her brothers regained it by killing the criminal. Garcia also used magical realism as the literary style to help conceive why the supernatural was perceived as the norm for the characters. An allegory, Garcia wove the crucifixion story into the novel. Santiago clothed in white linen, was killed in front of an unsupportive crowd, as well as stabbed in the hands first, exactly as Christ was. The presentation, in depth, enriched ,my understanding of the novel through knowledge of the Columbian culture, the novel’s time period, central themes, and magical realism.
Through the many characters in Garca Márquez’s book, we can see that the heavy burden of one’s honor is portrayed as the reason for Santiago Nasar’s unfortunate homicide. Pedro and Pablo Vicario, being the ones who held the knives that murdered him, were the direct cause of Santiago Nasar’s death, although, their motive was not an act of jealousy or rage. The underlying reason for their crime came from the upholding of their family's honor after they find out that Santiago Nasar has ruined their sister, Angela Vicario, and their family name, by taking her virginity. Many times throughout the novel, it is apparent that the twins truly don’t want to kill Santiago, but feel they have to. Their hesitation can be observed many times throughout the book by the fact that they wait so long to kill Santiago, and all the while tell everyone they come into contact with of their plan.
García, Márquez Gabriel, and Gregory Rabassa. Chronicle of a Death Foretold: A Novel. New York: Vintage International, 2003. Print
Characters are made to present certain ideas that the author believes in. In Gabriel García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold there are many characters included that range from bold, boisterous characters to minuscule, quiet characters but one thing they all have in common is that they all represent ideas. Characters in the novel convey aspects of Marquez’s Colombian culture.
In the bible the wooden cross represents the burden of the sins that Christ carried with him to his death. Santiago was killed in order to clear the sin of Angela Vicario. The wooden door could symbolise Santiago dying for the sins of the community much like Jesus Christ who died for the sins of man. Santiago finally died in the kitchen of his house; this could be a link to eating the body of Christ. In what other ways was Santiago’s death a stigma of Jesus Christ?
Marquez starts the description of the day of the murder with the Bishop’s visit to the town. Through this visit, Marquez begins to show both the town’s reverence for the Catholic faith and hypocrisy within the religion. The entire town prepared for the Bishop’s arrival with hopes that he would stay to bless the town, even though the Bishop had never left his boat in the past. This situational irony shows the town’s reverence, because the community continues to prepare the town for the bishop’s arrival even though he never stays. He only waves from his boat as it fades away from the town. This shows hypocrisy of in the Catholic religion, because the Bishop does not like the town even though Marquez gives no reason for the Bishop not to other than the fact that it was a small rural town. The Bishop never stays in the town, and only briefly makes appearances at the docks without even leaving his boat. This goes against the Catholic faith, because some of its core values are of forgiveness and acceptance. By not visiting the town the Bishop is being hypocritical and not practicing the values that he preaches. Further proof of the Bishop’s failure to help the town is that many people believe that...
So instead they try to explain and understand Santiago Nasar's death as an unavoidable force driven by a divine nature. It was the only consolation the narrator could draw from Santiago Nasar missing the anonymous note under the door that warned him of the plot against his life. Or the door that was open in the rear of the house that the protagonist could have fled to during the attack he faced from the Vicario brothers.
The symbolism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, emphasises the connection of the rural Colombian people and the Bible. The names, deaths, and spector activity as symbolism greatly affect the novella’s parallels to Christianity.
The death of Santiago Nassar – which could have been in vain and perhaps innocently – becomes the scapegoat of the narrative. Chronicles of a Death Foretold is thus not concerned with judgment, nor is it concerned with creating a hearty dualism between the murdered and the murderer, but rather engrossed in its pursuit of decisive exploration of human irrationality through those elements, especially when blindly condoned by status
We assemble in a cesspool of death waiting on our ultimate judgment. Everyone has their own belief or idea about the hypothesis for the hereafter, yet no one knows the legitimacy of these theories. This is why the majority of people are petrified about dying because the horror of the unknown is frightening to everyone. Yet, with this in mind numerous authors precede to inscribe works of literature about the death of man throughout history. Although these two writings share a common theme their representation and other symbolic references show their differences throughout their writings.
Second, the relationship between writing and death. Traditionally, death was a guarantee to immortality (e.g. the Greek narratives where by death, the hero gains immortality. Contemporarily, this notion has been altered, and writing is now linked to sacrifice. The narrator is used to forestall death. Where work had the duty of creating immortality, it now had the right to kill its author. After writing, the author is dead, but through the text, the author lives. The author becomes a victim of his own writing, and through his absence, his presence is guaranteed.