Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Author Context

Garcia Garcia Marquez is a leftist and critic of authoritarianism, with frequent advocates for social justice and progressive change. Most of his work align with socialist ideology, emphasizing on dismantling of oppressive structures (e.g., patriarchy, class hierarchies), as well as the need for collective accountability.

Core Concepts

Fragmented Narrative

Chronicle was written in non-linear structure, a blend of interviews and narrator memories. Marquez attempt to highlight the unreliability of narrative and to an extent a postmodernism stance, rejecting universal grand narratives (e.g., absolute truth, objectivity).

Magical Realism

With prophetic dreams and the fantastical atmosphere, magical realism reflect the regulation of the mundane by human believe.

Critique of Patriarchy and honor

Marquez dissect the machismo and societal obsession with honor, through a post structuralist stance to examine how rigid social hierarchies enforce destructive behaviors.

Determinism

The inevitability of Santiago's death, shows a determinist worldview, where individual agency are constrained, expressing concerns on the lack of power against systemic forces (here being societal norms and honor).

Collective Accountability

Marquez invites the reader to reconstruct the murder through fragmented interviews, while allowing readers to interpret the collective guilt of the community following a reader-response approach rather than a new criticism approach.

Critiques

Memory Fragility

Through expression of memory misalignment between different perspectives, Marquez express the fragility of memory and the decay of memory through time.

Subjectivity of Narratives

New Journalism approach warns the reader of the narrator also being a construct, with subjective views and hide or minimize truths to satisfy narrator's aim (proofing his friend, Santiago Nasar's innocence)

Form

Novella

Novella writings like Chronicle are usually a shorter novel that attempts to bring a moral lesson, a critique of a social system or a satire that present a social issue.

First Person Narrative

First person narrative is important to address the subjective and limiting nature of information from a single perspective.

New Journalism

By combining traditional journalism with extensive use of subjective language to express a stance directly.

Characters

Santiago Nasar

Santiago Nasar is the protagonist as a victim of brutal murder.

Reason for Construct

He is constructed to criticize the focus on following performative religious practices but not conforming to religion orthodoxy (ortho "correct" + doxa "belief) and orthopraxy (ortho "correct" + praxis "action").

• Criticism of performative rituals through the killing of Santiago Nasar

  • "Before God and before men... It was a matter of honor" ~Vicario brothers

    • Despite Vicario brothers' crime of murder, a violation of orthopraxy, the brothers continue to perform religious rituals (confession and attending Mass) without orthodoxy.

      • "But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins" ~Matthew 6:14-15

Narrator

Due to the new journalism approach, the narrator is constructed with subjectivism and as a character that interacts directly with the story. The narrator minimizes the discussions on himself and only reviews that:

• He is a good friend of Santiago
• At the time of murder he was in love with Maria Alejendrina Cervantes
• He married Mercedes Barcha
• Proposed to Mercedes Barcha when she is in primary school

  • "I had promised marriage to Mercedes Barcha as soon as she finished primary school, just as she herself would remind me fourteen years later when we got married." ~Narrator

Reason for Construct

The Narrator is constructed to explore the collective responsibility of the townsman and display the subjectivity of narration.

• Display of subjectivism