Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez
"On the day they were going to kill him …"
And so it begins. Between that opening line and the title, one is left in no doubt as to the outcome of this slender tome.
After Bayardo San Román returns his bride, Angela Vicario, to her family, having discovered on his wedding night that she is not a virgin, her mother beats her and her family demands to know who 'dishonoured' her. She gives them the name of Santiago Nasar and his fate is sealed as her twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo, set out with pig slaughtering knives to butcher him and regain their sister's honour.
In the few intervening hours, the entire village finds out. But nobody warns Santiago – either because they're distracted by other events, because they decide not to get involved or because they don't like the victim to be.
Gabriel García Márquez approaches this in the simplest way possible. He tells the story from the point of view of an unnamed friend of the victim who, 27 years later, returns to the village to research what happened and chronicle the events.
Thus it is written as reportage, compiled largely of a series of 'witness statements' and the narrator’s own recollections. Time has blurred people's memories and there are conflicts. Much remains unsure at the end. What is certain is, as Márquez puts it, that Santiago dies because of prudery.
And hypocrisy, since one of the twins is suffering from the clap.
Márquez portrays the clash melée that is caused when there are those who believe that women are possessions and that part of their value is their virginity.
And the women who know that this is not realistic and teach brides-to-be how to con their husbands.
And the men who regard sex with a much more open attitude.
But blame here is not so obviously easy to apportion as one might expect. How culpable is Angela? Did she really have sex with Santiago (there's no evidence of it) or did she pluck his name from thin air to protect someone else?
On her wedding night, she decided against attempting any of the tricks that the old women have taught her – she decides, in other words, to let her husband discover that she’s no virgin.
How culpable are the villagers who heard what was going to happen – and refused to get involved, whatever their reason?
Set in the Spanish Antilles in the early 20th century, this story of a modern honour killing combines prudery and hypocrisy with the tension of the tropical heat, the unanswered question and the overriding sense that fate, once set in motion, must be allowed to play itself out, whatever the consequences.
The clash of attitudes toward women and sex, and the acceptance of marriage as a transaction with no connection to love, is so clear here that it helps to illuminate other novels in the Márquez canon, including the recent Memories of My Melancholy Whores.
It's brilliant. It's devastating. You may know what's coming, but the ending still has the power to knot the guts and leave the reader breathing hard.
"On the day they were going to kill him …"
And so it begins. Between that opening line and the title, one is left in no doubt as to the outcome of this slender tome.
After Bayardo San Román returns his bride, Angela Vicario, to her family, having discovered on his wedding night that she is not a virgin, her mother beats her and her family demands to know who 'dishonoured' her. She gives them the name of Santiago Nasar and his fate is sealed as her twin brothers, Pedro and Pablo, set out with pig slaughtering knives to butcher him and regain their sister's honour.
In the few intervening hours, the entire village finds out. But nobody warns Santiago – either because they're distracted by other events, because they decide not to get involved or because they don't like the victim to be.
Gabriel García Márquez approaches this in the simplest way possible. He tells the story from the point of view of an unnamed friend of the victim who, 27 years later, returns to the village to research what happened and chronicle the events.
Thus it is written as reportage, compiled largely of a series of 'witness statements' and the narrator’s own recollections. Time has blurred people's memories and there are conflicts. Much remains unsure at the end. What is certain is, as Márquez puts it, that Santiago dies because of prudery.
And hypocrisy, since one of the twins is suffering from the clap.
Márquez portrays the clash melée that is caused when there are those who believe that women are possessions and that part of their value is their virginity.
And the women who know that this is not realistic and teach brides-to-be how to con their husbands.
And the men who regard sex with a much more open attitude.
But blame here is not so obviously easy to apportion as one might expect. How culpable is Angela? Did she really have sex with Santiago (there's no evidence of it) or did she pluck his name from thin air to protect someone else?
On her wedding night, she decided against attempting any of the tricks that the old women have taught her – she decides, in other words, to let her husband discover that she’s no virgin.
How culpable are the villagers who heard what was going to happen – and refused to get involved, whatever their reason?
Set in the Spanish Antilles in the early 20th century, this story of a modern honour killing combines prudery and hypocrisy with the tension of the tropical heat, the unanswered question and the overriding sense that fate, once set in motion, must be allowed to play itself out, whatever the consequences.
The clash of attitudes toward women and sex, and the acceptance of marriage as a transaction with no connection to love, is so clear here that it helps to illuminate other novels in the Márquez canon, including the recent Memories of My Melancholy Whores.
It's brilliant. It's devastating. You may know what's coming, but the ending still has the power to knot the guts and leave the reader breathing hard.
