“The ethical endorsement of revenge in the society of the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold”

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Recommended: Character of revenge in literature

What is revenge? Revenge is an action of hurting or harming someone to retaliate for an injury or wrong suffered at his or her hands. In ‘Chronicles of a Death Foretold’, the theme of revenge is the primary reason behind the unfolding of the entire narrative. The play is set in a Latin American society, where actions taken to in order to avenge honor and virginity are completely justified. In Latin America, vengeance is sought against those who speak or act against someone else. And in extreme cases, revenge leads to mobs, and sometimes-even death. The latter was exactly what happened in the case of Santiago Nasar. The murder committed by the Vicario brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, was an act of revenge against Santiago Nasar, because they believed that he took away their sister’s virginity. In a Catholic society, when a woman is not a virgin before marriage, her entire family is defamed in front of the entire society. Honor killing is “permissible” in such cases. But if it was only the Vicarios holding a grudge against Santiago, why didn’t the rest of the society bother informing Santiago about the planned murder? Why didn’t Victoria Guzmán, despite knowing everything, inform her master about his doomsday? Why did the Vicario brothers think that the Arabs were taking revenge from them? Why didn’t Father Amador and Colonel Lazaro Aponte take stricter measures against the murderers?

We can compare a lot of instances of revenge between the ones mentioned in the novel and real-life Latin American culture. For example, there are conflicts between anti-narcotic officials and natives: officers steal and are abusive and threaten the native people. In order to take revenge on those who speak against them the officers make “evidence”...

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...r’s murder is justified, and thus remain involved in the plan.

From one perspective, even though murder and honor killing as revenge seem very abhorrent, it does induce a fear in everyone, preventing anyone from sabotaging anyone’s honor and dignity. Everyone is aware of the consequences if someone’s virtue is forcefully taken away, resulting in the damage of a family’s image. However, from another perspective, killing is morally and lawfully wrong. Behind the idea of honor killing as revenge, there may lay the forces of dominant but primitive ideologies of culture and society. The desire to take vengeance is inevitable. All the emotions and feelings in the Vicario brothers was driven by the thoughts of revenge as well as the pressures of society, traditions, or a belief. All the occurrences in this play culminate to the major theme of revenge.

Word Count: 1487

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