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Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1982) by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is set in a small Columbian town. The novel revolves around the murder of Santiago Nasser for the defilement of Angela Vicarico. The importance of honor to the culture depicted in the novel is evident throughout the story. Santiago's murder is motivated and justified by honor.
Honor has different values and meaning in the context of different cultures. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, set in a Latin culture, the adherence to family honor and values are viewed as one of the highest moral obligations. Events in the book are provoked by the idea of fulfilling the expectations brought on by the honor of family traditions.
Angela's marriage to Bayardo San Roman was arranged, she did not wish to marry him. Bayardo came from a wealthy and prestigious family and has come to town to find a bride. When Bayardo awoke from his afternoon siesta one day and saw Angela and her mother. Pura, crossing the town square he was smitten by her beauty. He asked the landlady who the young one was and then told her "When I wake up remind me that I'm going to marry her" (p. 29).
Bayardo's courtship strategy consisted of charming Angela's family. "Angela never forgot the horror of the night on which her parents and her older sisters with their husbands, gathered together in the parlor, imposed on her the obligation to marry a man she had barely seen" (p. 34). Her parent's asserted that "a family dignified by modest means had no right to distain that prize of destiny" (p. 34). When Angela protested that she did not love Bayardo her mother responded, "Love can be learned too" (p.35). So her commitment...
She resolves to tell her mother the truth but is dissuaded by two coworkers who "made me believe that they were experts in men's tricks" (p. 38). They taught her "old wives' tricks to feign her lost possession, so that on her first morning as a newlywed she could display open under the sun in the courtyard of her house the linen sheet with the stain of honor" (p. 38).
On their wedding night Bayardo discovers that Angela is not a virgin. This prompts him to take her back to Pura who beats her with such rage that Angela thinks she is going to kill her. Angela's twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo, return home at their mother's summons and press their overwhelmed sister to tell the reason for her humiliated return from her marriage bed. When Angela says, "Santiago Nasar," the twins know immediately that they must defend their sister's honor (p. 47).
Familial duty is another important theme linked to the novel's portrayal of Latin American culture. When Angela has premarital sex, and married as a non-virgin, she not only dishonors her family but also fails in her duty to them. Society demands that Angela has an obligation to stay a virgin and marry to as high a station as she can, even though she doesn't love the man she marries.…
References
Garcia-Marquez, G. (1982). Chronicle of a death foretold. Gregory Rabassa [Trans]. New York: Vintage International.
.. 'The only thing I prayed to God was to give me the courage to kill myself,' Angela Vicario told me. 'But he didn't give it to me (Marquez 41-42). Again, as with the men in the story, women place honor as more important that life. Pura Vicario does all that she can to preserve her daughter's honor, just as her sons will do all they can to restore it. Since
One critic note the long-term change in Angela, stating that "she undergoes an extraordinary conversion and discovers in herself a love for Bayardo San Roman as tremendous and inexplicable as his for her" (Michaels para. 5). This change in Angela has to be as much a surprise to her as it is to Bayardo and the reader, but again, her choices are limited. Other females in the community have been
Even the requirement that Angela be a virgin on her wedding night is tied to the Church, where priests never marry and so supposedly are virgins, and good Catholic girls must be virgins when they marry. In addition, throughout the novel, the murder, and the events leading up to it are often referred to as being "God's will," which indicates how the Church permeates everyday life. The narrator's mother
This appearance does not improve as the book progresses. Because their first set of knives is taken away, the twins go to the butcher Faustino Santos twice to have knives sharpened for the murder. In piecing together the story later on, the narrator says, "Faustino Santos told me that he'd still been doubtful, and that he reported it to a policeman who came by a little later to buy a
Angela knows she cannot change this social perception of gender roles, and gives the first name that comes to mind because she realizes that she is in the position of sentencing that man to death, and probably tries to save the man who had actually dishonored her. Guilt is a major theme in the novel, and is closely linked to the theme of fate. In fact, this inextricable link explains
Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis both place the protagonist in opposition to a prevailing family structure. At the same time, the family structure dictates personal identity, character traits, worldviews, and reactions to events. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold and in The Metamorphosis, personal identities are malleable and yet the changes that occur take place within a confining social structure at which