Theme Of Death In Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

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“We’re going to kill Santiago Nasar” (pg. 52) said Pablo and Pedro Vicario. They told everyone that they were going to “cut his guts out.” They spoke loudly of their intentions in the butcher market; they boast about it to Clotilde Armenta, and told Cristo Bedoya, Santiago’s best friend, to let Santiago know they were waiting to kill him. By the time the bishop’s boat arrived, nearly everyone in the town knew about the plot—except the victim Santiago himself. The two most important forces that Marquez uses to show why nobody stopped Santiago’s death were the Catholic religion of the town and the honor code (machismo) of the Vicario brothers. Whereas religion gives you the courage to make the decisions you must make in a crisis, and then the confidence to leave the result to a higher power, honor plays the catalyst role in this story that triggers nearly every event because the Vicario brothers were driven by the fact that they felt they must return their family’s honor at any cost.
In “Chronicle of a Death Foretold” the Bishop is a symbolic religious figure of this representation. “He won’t even get off the boat…He’ll give an obligatory blessing, as always, and go back the way he came…He hates this town.”(pg. 8) This is Plácida Linero’s comment about the much-anticipated visit from the bishop. As it turns out, she was correct; the bishop did not even bother to get off the boat, but made the sign of the cross toward the gathered crowd, then turned and went back up the river. This incident showed that the moral and spiritual authorities in this society were more concerned with meaningless ritual than they were with actually helping the people they serve. For example, when Father Amador, the local priest, heard about...

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...s virginity indicates just how awful the society’s morals are. The situation would not have been created was there not some level of consciousness behind them. For example, “Clotilde was certain that 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.” (pg.57) She realized the truth about the Vicario brothers; they didn’t really want to kill Santiago Nasar, but only felt pressured into doing so by society, which said that real men must defend his family honor. All morning, they went around the town loudly proclaiming their intention to kill Santiago, in hopes that word will get back to him and that he will either avoid harm or they will be stopped by the authorities. Unfortunately, nobody stops the Vicario brothers, and they are forced to go through with the senseless and unjust killing.

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