Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez

Values are a vital part of any community. They shape the identity of a culture and help to form the identity of each individual in that society. Sometimes these embedded values have more power over a person than anyone would like to admit. Gabriel García Márquez shows the power of the value of honor in his book, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In García Márquez’s writing, the theme of honor shows to have control over most of the characters. Through the many characters in García 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.

The concept and belief of honor in the Columbian culture in Chronicle of a Death Foretold is one of the deciding aspects of the character's actions, motives, and beliefs. Nobody questions the actions taken to preserve ones honor because it is such an important moral trait that one must cherish. In this society a man or woman without honor is an outcast to the community and to the culture. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold two twin brothers are burdened with defending this tradition of honor. The brothers find out that their sister has lost her virginity before marriage and she claims that Santiago Nasar is to blame. To regain the honor of their sister, and their family the brothers believe it is their duty to kill Santiago Nasar. Could such

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.

Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and Chronicle of A Death Foretold by

Although prostitution may be one of the world’s oldest professions to this day it is seen as a degrading and disrespectful career especially when regarding female prostitutes. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the town is very critical and strict about chastity and premarital sex. Maria Alejandrina Cervantes is the town madam which by society’s standards makes her to most marginalized, but ironically she is not brought down by her society’s rules. Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses characterization and irony to demonstrate Maria Alejandrina Cervantes’s contradictory role and to develop the theme of going against society in Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Marquez employs the motif of flowers within the novel to illustrate the role of women within a Latin American society; the cultural and symbolic implications of this associate flowers with purity, victimization, gender barriers, and deceit. In doing so, Marquez creates a microcosm of Latin America, exposing the core of Columbian culture and society with all its aspects such as ethnicity, and social norms and conventions that led to a series of insecurities and poverty in the community, and its affect on the role of women. The cultural context of this novel must first be considered before examining the symbolic importance of flowers.

I will be discussing the theme of destiny and fate in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a death Foretold. Destiny is the predetermined, inevitable course of events. In the novel Marquez presents his belief that fate and destiny can overcome and are more powerful than anything humans are capable of doing. This is shown by using events of chance, coincidences and errors made by characters. Destiny seems to be creating a clear path for the Vicario brothers to kill Santiago.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez Works Cited Not Included Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, is a story that brings one to question the code of honor that exists in the Columbian town. Marquez' paints a picture that shows how societal values, such as honor, have become more important than the inherent good of human life. The Vicario brothers' belief that their sister was done wrong was brought upon by this honor, along with racial and social tension. The dangerous path of both honor and religious faith caused Santiago's untimely death.

The cultural values of Colombians displayed in Marquez’s novel are not just the norms of their society, but what they identify as morally right or wrong and what they perceive as bringing honor and respect. The most prominent Colombian principles conveyed through the characters in Chronicle of a Death Foretold are the maintaining of the honor of one’s family and the two closely related ideas of the submissive, oppressed female and the role of machismo in dictating the lives of men. Honor is integral to the story that unravels in Chronicle of a Death Foretold; it is the reason and justification for the murder of the main character Santiago Nasar. Honor, as defined by Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, is one’s “good name or public esteem” and is the foundation for many Asian and Latin American cultures (“Honor”).

“Fake News”: Analyzing Gabriel García Márquez’s subtle commentary and use of minor characters through syntax, juxtaposition, and periphrasis

In the novel, honor is taken very seriously. Garcia Marquez uses matter-of-fact narrative to show that honor is more important than what is true. No one ever questions an action that is done for the sake of preserving someone’s honor. It is believed to be a fundamental moral trait that every person should have.

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, honor is a very prominent theme in the town and its culture. The need for honor influences many actions taken by individuals and traditions that characters strictly follow. As the narrator’s mother states, honor is love. The reader sees this statement supported throughout the story through beliefs and actions of the Vicario twins, Angela’s mother, and the townspeople as a whole. Honor is such a guiding force in the small community that it almost replaces what love should be. Pura Vicario, Angela’s mother, for example, values honor more than she values true family cherishing and love. Angela’s twin brothers have high respect for their own family honor, and they strive to uphold it by showing their love for their sister in hunting Santiago to retrieve her honor. The townspeople display their devotion to honor as they do not attempt to stop Santiago Nasar’s death. The qualified statement honor is love applies to the novel in actions by the twins, Angela’s mother, and the townspeople, and how their desperation to defend honor controls them.

People in the small town are eager to know if the couple has properly complete their marriage, by doing this it is not only displaying blood on a bed sheet it is displaying honor, which the Vicario family do not have due to Angela. In order to restore the family honor the twins must kill Santiago. The narrators states “The lawyer stood by the thesis of homicide in legitimate defense of honor, which was upheld by the court in good faith, and the twins declared at the end of the trial that they would have done it again a thousand times over for the same reason” (Marquez 48). The narrator shows in Chronicle of a Death Foretold the type of violence is murder for honor. Even through the twins slaughtered Santiago like a pig, the murder was not completely their fault. The boys purposely announced the murder to the town people to have someone try to stop them from committing the murder. Pedro and Pablo did not feel it is right killing their friend, but they did not have any other options besides killing him to restore honor. The brothers feel pressure by society expectations to become violent. As well their own mother calls them with Angela’s situation and expects them to resolve the problem. In this society a man or women without honor are treated as an outcast in the community and to the

“Violence has been a prominent social response to the application of structural adjustment policies throughout Latin America. There are societies in which, things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Violence is a shared disease that seems to arise in all societies where there are profound social differences and exploitation…Many Latin American societies are condemned to bloodletting by the precedents of violence and gross injustice that characterize their culture and their history.”

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the concepts of honor and love are constantly mentioned. While love is often mentioned with adjectives that seem to conflict with the traditional idea of what love is, honor is repeatedly referred to in the way it is expected to be in. In the town, love seems to be absent in most people’s lives and it is said to be a “beast” or a “disorder.” In contrast, honor is extremely important to those in the town and revered. The two concepts of honor and love are distinctly different from each other in the novella, yet the narrator’s mother equates the two by saying “‘Honor is love’” (Marquez 97). Although the journalist’s mother conflates honor with love in order to explain the events of the town, further examination proves that her justification is false. In no way does an act of honor equate to an act of love.