Chronicle of a Death Untold by Gabriel García Márquez

Social standards may confine individuals from pursuing their own personal interests. Through the relationship between societal standards and individual interests, Sandra Cisneros’ short story, “Woman Hollering Creek,” introduces the roles of men and women in a Hispanic culture. The protagonist, Cleofilas Hernandez, is trapped in an abusive relationship with her newly-wed husband, Juan Pedro. However, Cleofilas tolerates the toxic relationship due to the social norms of her society, which reveals that the Hispanic culture revolves around a patriarchal society and that women have to be submissive to their husbands. As the story progresses, Cleofilas abandons the gender norm to lead an independent lifestyle.

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.

In this essay, I will argue Catalina de Erauso’s experiences in Peru both confirm and challenge the expectations placed on masculine and feminine honor in early colonial Spanish America. For women to be considered honorable in colonial Spanish America, they either became nuns or they married and became women of families. (Milstead Lecture, 10/26/17) This meant they either devoted themselves and their virginities to the church and God or they devoted themselves to their husbands and children. An example of dishonorable women in colonial times were prostitutes. In the book Lieutenant Nun, de Erauso finishes her story with a threat to the harlots she encounters on the streets of Naples. “… and a hundred gashes with this blade to the fool who

When the Spanish and the Portuguese established the colonies in the Americas, not only did they bring their material culture of technologies, clothes, cuisines, architecture, crops, and animals but they also brought their intellectual traditions such as that of honor. The history of colonial Latin America gives many questions related to the understanding of honor. The culture of honor during this period of time was pivotal as it provided a set of values that organized society and individual lives. Legal codes, social gatherings, seating arrangements were all mixed in with cultural meanings, which helps define status within a system of honor. Honor is also seen within fiction produced from the colonial Latin American period with the production of work such as Don Juan Tenorio and Don Quixote. These dramatic works glorify the chivalric tradition of honor, romanticizing it and creating a flattering fiction that the elite of colonial Latin America found convenient to strive for. Literary critics and cultural historians have studied the structure honor code of this period closely and in this book it can also be seen that honor can be irrationally inflexible, cruel and especially oppressive toward those of lower class, “tainted” lineage and female gender during this time. In this book, The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame, and Violence in Colonial Latin America, scholars Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett Rivera take on the difficult but exciting task of trying to define the idea and

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

As a woman, Angela Vicario is the epitome of a traditional Colombian woman. A traditional Colombian woman is expected to be virgins when they get married; but Vicario defys this social custom causing Vicario to get “softly pushed his wife into [her house] without speaking,” (46). These details emphasize the idea that women are given different standards than men. The details help highlight Marquez’s criticism of how the traditional Colombian woman is treated as and thought of as. From a very young age Vicario and her sisters were taught “how to do screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy candy, and write engagement announcements,” (31). These skills were taught to better prepare the girls for marriage; displaying the difference in gender roles. Marquez uses parallel structure to emphasize the amount of skills one has to learn before they can be considered as good and pure. Many years after Bayardo San Román returns Vicario she still does “machine embroidery with her friends just as before she had made cloth tulips and paper birds, but when her mother went to bed she would stay in her room until dawn writing letters with no future,” (93). The diction of the words “no future” and “still” suggest that Vicario’s life is stuck in

Gabriel Marquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold is known to be based on a true occurrence in Columbia, where two brothers killed a man because of an affair the man had with their married sister. This is deemed immoral in most cultures, but acceptable in the Colombian society. Prior to reading the novel, our teacher decided to hold an in-class discussion directed toward the students from a South American culture/background. Through this discussion, I began to understand how the Colombian culture is set up and possibly why Gabriel Marquez intended to write this novel. The hispanic culture consists of many ideologies back when Marquez wrote his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold and some still remain active. Their cultural belief system

Years after the crime, the narrator describes how the townspeople didn't do anything to prevent the murder because they believed “affairs of honor are sacred monopolies” (57). With the highly-regarded tone and phrase “sacred monopolies”, Marquez expresses not only how important the ‘code of honor’ is in Latin America, but also how an act of honor is viewed as an untouchable act. Because the townspeople held high regards for acts of honor, they perceived Santiago's gruesome death as a ritual instead of an act of vengeance. After the Vicario brothers share their plans with a majority of the town, “no one even wondered whether Santiago Nasar had been warned” (12). The dismissive tone within the passage depicts how, despite the brother’s open threats, many people did nothing to stop the brothers because they viewed the act of violence as almost fated.

In Latin America, where this novel is based, the flowers represent the purity of women; therefore, Marquez utilizes the symbol of flowers or flower buds to represent virginity. The female figures are mainly associated with this notion of purity; however, it is paralleled by the machismo concept of honor. In Colombian culture, honor is perceived as the fundamental moral trait that plays an essential role in keeping society bound to a strict moral pathway. This is paralleled by women’s social constraint of preserving their virginity; being ‘pure’ plays a crucial role in protecting a woman’s sense of virtue and dignity before she is married.

Furthermore, the act of Bayardo returning his impure wife and the Vicario brothers killing the perpetrator of their sister shows the significance of honour in the Colombian society. Moreover, Bayardo returns his newlywed wife to her family once he realises she is not a virgin. Bayardo “didn’t enter, but softly pushed his wife into the house without speaking a word” (García Márquez 46). Bayardo does not want any association with an impure woman, 1111since it would potentially taint his reputation. Also, Bayardo “grabbed her by her arm and brought her into the light” (García Márquez 46) depicting how it is the role of the man to return his wife if she was not a virgin.

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.

Taking the location of the story into consideration we are able to understand that it is set in a small, isolated, confined community that is somewhat abandoned by the outside world. It is understandable that this isolation of the community has allowed it to maintain obsolete traditions which remain implanted in their society. Traditions such as the “honor killing” of Santiago Nasar or the “cult of death,” that the Vicario daughters practiced, as well as the custom of superstition and of course the essential concept of pride and honor.

In the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, uses the element point of view supported by certain motifs to portray society and how its gender roles affect the narration. The author’s choice in doing so is important simply because the novella is based on a real life story which occurred in Sucre, Colombia, in 1951, where he had lived. The incident happened while Gabriel Garcia Marquez was in college studying journalism, just like the narrator of the novel. Marquez happened to know some of the people involved, which gave the novella more significance. In the mid twentieth century, Colombian culture had various aspects due to its diversity and how society had evolved while still containing traditional

Religion is a dominant force in culture, social standings, and human interaction. Though narrated in a religious society that is centered around Catholicism, the Chronicle of a Death Foretold is about an affluent young man named Santiago Nasar, who is murdered by twin brothers, Pablo and Pedro Vicario. As evident as the community prepares for the bishop’s arrival, religion is intertwined in their culture. So, with the potency of a religious head figure, civilians alter their daily lives to follow a religious protocol in the beginning of the book. Because religion is foundational in the book’s societal structure, it shapes aspects of gender, sexual engagements, and character interaction, it provides assistance to understanding the complexity of a character’s development and actions.

Gabriel Garcia Marques provides a unique platform in his novella, Chronicle of a Death Foretold (COADF) to analyze facets of traditional Colombian values. The characters provide context regarding particular sectors of religion, cultural values and social norms throughout the novel. Marquez highlights a multitude of cultural juxtapositions throughout all of his novels, however, COADF in particular comments on the social hypocrisy of religion and the double standards due to gender norms throughout the novel. In the novella, Angela Vicario’s character highlights misguided principles and helps to understand how women and other groups of people in the country are maltreated. Common themes throughout the novel often victimize Angela Vicario, such as sexual identity, alcohol abuse and religious scrutiny. Marquez conveys these themes through imagery, symbolism, allegory and most especially periphrasis. This paper will effectively highlight how these factors demonstrate the cultural discrepancy in allowance of freedoms and the roles of women in the novel, and broader country.