NATIONAL UNIVIRSTY OF STUDY

AND RESEARCH IN LAW,

RANCHI

THE CHRONICLES OF DEATH FORETOLD

SUBMITTED BY: SUBMITED

TO:

ARNOLD RUNDA MR. GUNJAN DUBEY

SEMESTER – II ASSOCIATE
PROFESSOR

SECTION – A ENGLISH

ROLL NO. 858

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 ABSTRACT

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the unidentified narrator is destined to bring upon the
reader a failed attempt to investigate the murder of his friend .Although a judicial inquest
determined that two brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, murdered Santiago Nasar in order to
avenge their sister's loss of virginity, the narrator intimates that the entire town, which
remains nameless, was complicit in the crime. In murdering Santiago, the Vicario brothers
appear to obey a collective will. Traditions were so ingrained in their brains that they used
them as excuses for their wrongdoing and forgot their roles in their community. Ostensibly a
quest for truth and an attempt to decipher a recurring and eternal present, the narrative
conveys a terrible self-knowledge through a tragicomic language of dreams. There are two
main reasons why Gabriel Garcia Marquez decided to tell the story in such an unorthodox
manner. One is based on the purpose of recounting Santiago Nasar’s murder and the other is
based on the weakness of memory as a way of knowing. The image formed from perfectly
interlocking puzzle pieces is distinctly different from the shattered distortion reflected by the
broken mirror. Márquez portrays the defects of the following traditions and how they have
lost their meaning in the Colombian society.

LITERALLY REVIEW
In this novel, chronicle of death foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has used the diction to
show how tradition have lost their meaning in the Colombian society. Gabriel portrays how
the bystander effect impacts the people around Santiago Nasar who act submissively
revealing how people don’t not want to help others in the difficult situation, unless it affects
them directly. In a small Town on the northern coast of Colombia a young reputed man gets
brutally murdered and the events leading to his death.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold describes the murder of a young man, Santiago Nasar, and the
events leading to this death. It also follows some of the characters’ lives after he is killed. The
murder occurs following Angela Vicario's wedding night, when her wealthy
husband, Bayardo San Roman, discovers that she is not a virgin. Just hours before the
murder, Angela was returned to her parents by her husband. The culprits are Pablo and Pedro
Vicario, twins and older brothers to the bride, Angela Vicario. Pablo and Pedro intimidate
Angela into giving them the name of the man who deflowered her. She—perhaps on an
impulse, or perhaps sincerely—tells them it was Santiago Nasar. Much evidence throughout
the story suggests that this accusation is false. However, Angela's brothers, Pedro and Pablo
Vicario, take her word for it and kill Santiago in broad daylight in a crowded public square.
To defend their sister’s honour and the honour of the family, the twins resolve to kill him.
They go about town announcing their intentions to all who will listen, such that Santiago is
one of the last people to learn that his life is in danger. 
Having armed us with this foreknowledge of the murder, Garcia Marquez relates the events
leading up to it in non-chronological fashion. Some of the townspeople try to prevent the
murder but fail, others are too frightened do so, and still others want Santiago dead. He
describes the wedding of Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Roman: the grandest celebration
the town had ever seen. Bayardo's father was the famous General of the civil wars, General

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Petronio San Roman, and his family is very wealthy. The formal festivities of the wedding
end at 6:00 p.m., when Angela and her groom leave to consummate their marriage. Enraged,
he returns her to her parents in the early hours of the morning. Angela’s mother, Purísima del
Carmen, beats her savagely, and calls her brothers, who are still out partying, back to the
house. They interrogate her, and she tells them that Santiago Nasar took her virginity.
Following Angela's confession that Santiago Nasar took her virginity, her twin brothers
decide to kill him. They announce their plan to anyone who will listen, in part, it seems, to
allow someone to stop them or warn Santiago. Pedro and Pablo Vicario resolve to kill
Santiago in order to defend the honour of their family. They take the two best knives from
their pigsty and bring them to the local meat market, where they proceed to sharpen them in
full view of all the butchers setting up shop. Everyone behaves as though someone else will
halt the revenge-a local police officer, the mayor, the butcher, and even the local priest all
knew of the murder plot-but no one stops it. By six o clock a.m. of the day following the
wedding, everyone in town knows the twins are going to kill Santiago. However, the butchers
mostly ignore them, thinking them drunk. From the meat market the twins go to Clotilde
Armenta’s milk shop to keep watch over Santiago’s house, which is across the street. They
announce their intentions to everyone in the shop, including Clotilde. Almost no one takes
them seriously, but when Colonel Lázaro Aponte hears of their plan he confiscates their
knives. Santiago himself, however, is still unaware. A few try to warn him, including Cristo
Bedoya, who has spent the morning with him; Cristo finds out too late, however, and cannot
find his friend to warn him. The Narrator explains that Santiago returned home and fell asleep
without turning on the light. Eventually, the father of Santiago's fiancée warns him of the
plot. He is extremely confused as to why the Vicario twins want to kill him, and his fear
leaves him so shaken up that he cannot even find his way back to his house. He explains his
belief that Santiago had nothing to do with Angela, despite her insistence that he took her
virginity, and so never understood his own death. He is extremely confused as to why the
Vicario twins want to kill him, and his fear leaves him so shaken up that he cannot even find
his way back to his house. The Vicario brothers spot him while he stumbles through town.
Santiago sprints to his door, which, unfortunately, is locked, due to his mother's belief that he
was safe at home and her desire to keep the Vicarios away from him. Pedro and Pablo catch
up to Santiago and stab him to death against his own door.
The narrator writes that the visiting judge was perplexed by the coincidences leading to
Santiago’s death, such as when Santiago’s mother slammed “the fatal door” just before her
son reached it. The stench from the disembowelled Santiago wafts through town and
implicates everyone in his death. After the murder, an angry group of Arabs, with whom
Santiago's father immigrated, chase the Vicarios into a local church. The twins give
themselves up and are locked in prison. The Church fosters this culture of violence and
suffering. When the Vicario brothers seek refuge in a church after murdering Santiago, the
priest tells them that they were pardoned in the eyes of God since the killing had been a
matter of honour. Although at a conscious level they may feel absolved, the Vicario brothers
remain haunted by the stench of death. Arnold M. Penuel notes that the psychosomatic
disorders of the Vicario brothers, such as their inability to sleep for three nights, constitute a
language of the body which expresses their unconscious revulsion to their crime (763). The
Vicario family, meanwhile, ashamed by the whole ordeal, leaves town in disgrace. The twins
are tried three years later and acquitted because the murder had been an honour killing. The
Narrator lingers longest on Angela Vicario. He explains that, after Bayardo rejected her, she

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found herself falling deeply and mysteriously in love with him. For years, living her life as a
seamstress, she wrote to him nearly every day. Her letters went unanswered until, finally,
Bayardo, old and fat, showed up at her doorstep. The Church fosters this culture of violence
and suffering. When the Vicario brothers seek refuge in a church after murdering Santiago,
the priest tells them that they were pardoned in the eyes of God since the killing had been a
matter of honour. Although at a conscious level they may feel absolved, the Vicario brothers
remain haunted by the stench of death. Arnold M. Penuel notes that the psychosomatic
disorders of the Vicario brothers, such as their inability to sleep for three nights, constitute a
language of the body which
expresses their unconscious revulsion to their crime. The figure of the bishop further
reinforces the association of the Church with brutality.
As the bishop approaches the town, caged roosters begin to make a din.
During her conversation with the narrator, more than two decades after the
death of Santiago Nasar, Angela Vicario justified her refusal to be married by the bishop: “I
didn’t want to be blessed by a man who cut off only the combs for soup and threw the rest
of the rooster into the garbage.”
The narrator is imprisoned in
circular communal thought patterns and the past adumbrates the future of a society in
spiritual bondage.

CONCLUSION
While investigating how Gabriel Garcia Marquez crafts the narrative structure in his novel,
Chronicles of death foretold, evidence shows to evoke more than pure perspective. Before he
explains the murder in detail, the Narrator recounts how Angela and Bayardo met and came
to be married. The characters in the book are contrasted with each other to show changes in
the meaning of the tradition. Gabriel. They are metaphoric vicars who punish Santiago like
ecclesiastical judges carrying out a sentence. The Vicario brothers seem reluctant to commit
the crime, since they publicly announce their intention to murder Santiago, and even
reportedly regard Santiago with pity. Santiago’s lonely death appears to be a matter of
destiny rather than a tragedy caused by personal rancor. Some critics take their cue from the
narrator. Gustavo Pellón, for instance, focuses on the dynamics of collective violence in
Crónica while barely noticing the self-serving character of its narrative. Pellón overlooks the
hidden motives of the narrator whose stated intention is to reconstruct the different
perspectives of witnesses into an illuminating whole – to reconstruct the broken shards of the
mirror of memory. The Narrator lingers longest on Angela Vicario. He explains that, after
Bayardo rejected her, she found herself falling deeply and mysteriously in love with him. For
years, living her life as a seamstress, she wrote to him nearly every day. The Narrator
completes his story with a full description of the murder. He explains his belief that Santiago
had nothing to do with Angela, despite her insistence that he took her virginity, and so never
understood his own death. After watching the Bishop pass, Santiago runs into his friend

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Cristo Bedoya, with whom he chats for a while. The two-part ways and a friend inform Cristo
Bedoya of the threats being made against Santiago’s life. Further investigation into the social
conception of Honour may bring to light the additional insight into the community's action.
Now days everybody is so accustomed to certain belief that we do anticipate the outcome of
our actions. These show the readers Marque’s Criticism on the current immoral system of
following traditions in the community. One-way traditions have lost their meaning, it’s
shown through the use of diction of two characters, as one presents tradition that has become
an excuse for wrongdoings. Nobody in the novel ever questions any action that is taken to
preserve someone's honour, since it is commonly believed to be a fundamental moral trait
that is vital to keep intact. A person without honour is an outcast in the community. All of the
characters in the novel are influenced by this powerful construction of honour. The novel's
style is itself a ritual repetition of the events surrounding a crime. It does not follow a
traditional narrative arc, but rather is told for the cathartic value of the act of telling. The only
thing we gain from reading the story is the same limited knowledge of the occurrence that is
available to the narrator. In this sense, the novel can be seen as a mere ritual of investigation
as an end in itself with no other results or discoveries.

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