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 family resides at the core. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Santiago Nasar is the death referred to in the title. Like Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis, Nasar has been unfairly stigmatized but neither receives help from his family. In fact, the family is presented as a source -- or at least an enhancer of -- suffering. Nasar in Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Samsa in The Metamorphisis share a common fate. They are isolated, ostracized, and stigmatized. They...
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