[Chronicle of a Death Foretold - by Gabriel Garcia Marquez]

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The Novel

“Chronicle of a Death Foretold " is the name of the novel in which the narrator attempts to reconstruct the events that led to the murder of Santiago Nazar Pedro and Pablo Vicario. He does this with their own memories, as well as the accounts of those who witnessed the murder and who sought to twenty-seven years after the events. Thus, the novel has many of the attributes of a murder mystery, but not usually representative of the genre: the killers have announced their intention around the world gathered for a few hours before the event. What is the narrator, and all the characters must learn is how to murder, which could happen publicly announced, many well-intentioned people do nothing to stop the Vicario brothers, who had little heart for writing and that your ads are open, were in effect asking stop. (Bell-Villada, 19)

The narrator's reconstruction of the events of that morning is complicated by the varying accounts of people's whereabouts, their awareness of the brothers' intentions, and their feelings toward Nasar. They cannot even agree on the weather that morning, whether it was radiantly pleasant or oppressively funereal. The narrator objectively records all details, scarcely weighing them for consistency or import, possibly because he is attempting a purely journalistic account, and possibly because he resembles his mother in the way, as he notes, “she is accustomed to noting . . . superfluous detail when she wants to get to the heart of the matter.”

Nasar is murdered by the Vicario brothers to avenge their sister Angela's dishonor. She had married Bayardo San Román the previous day, but after a day and a night of extravagant feasting by the village, the groom discovers that his bride is not a virgin and returns her to her home. Her mother beats her, and upon questioning by her brothers, Angela Vicario identifies Santiago Nasar as her “perpetrator.” Their duty is clear. They take two of the knives they use in their trade of slaughtering pigs, sharpen them at another butcher's shop, then wait in Clothilda Armenta's milk shop, from which they can watch Nasar's bedroom window, until he goes out to see the bishop who is to come and bless the village. They carry out their simple plan, to butcher Nasar at his front door, and profoundly change the lives of everyone who has gathered to watch.

Thus, of the murdered man and the woman he allegedly wronged, the reader learns little more than of the characters on the ...