Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez and “The House of Bernarda Alba”, by Frederico García Lorca
People will do and say almost anything to protect their reputations. Their reputations become such a large part of their lives that their thoughts and actions revolve around protecting and maintain them. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez and “The House of Bernarda Alba”, by Frederico García Lorca, the characters focus their lives on building and maintaining good reputations. Bernarda’s life totally revolved around her reputation. The Vicario brothers got so caught up in trying to regain the family’s honor they were even willing to kill a man. Finally, In “In a Grove”, by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Tajomaru, Takehiko, and his wife all took credit for Takehiko’s death. They did this to receive some honor and try to better their reputations in a tough situation.
Bernarda dedicates her life to insure that her family has a good reputation. She acts like this because she cares so much about what other people think of her. Bernarda is constantly regulating the things that her daughters can and can’t do. After their father’s death Bernarda wants to stick with tradition so she tells her daughters, “[d]uring our eight years of mourning no wind from the street will enter this house!” She is forcing her daughters to shut out whatever social life they had to stay in Bernarda’s “prison” for eight years and mourn their father’s death. She forces her daughters to stay in the house because she thinks that if she lets her daughters out people will think that they are not sad about their fathers death and Bernarda doesn’t want to give people a reason to talk about the family. Bernarda is so concerned what the neighbors think about the family that she tries to make sure that none of the family’s business leaks out of the house, so the neighbors won’t have anything to talk about. During a dispute in her house she says, “[t]he neighbors must have their ears glued to the walls.” She is terrified that the neighbors may have heard something and now they will have something to gossip about. Bernarda is so concerned about the image of her family that other people see, she even tells her family what to wear. When Bernarda’s daughter Martirio is going to go out into the courtyard, Bernarda says, “[v]ery well, but don’t take the kerchief off your head.
Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, and Chronicle of A Death Foretold by
...process to maintain honor then it would not be a major determinate on that person character and family. The preservation of honor is similar to recent corruption scandals in Providence, Rhode Island. The mayor of Providence Buddy Cianci focused and pursued his life on the attainment of power in the city. He cheated and lied his way through the office as governor doing anything he could to remain in power. Like in the pursuit of honor he made many business relationships and also fired anyone who would ruin his chances at remaining in office. Similarly to what happens in the pursuit of honor he devoted his entire life to his campaign. His struggle for power in Providence is similar to the way Garcia-Marquez shows complexity involved in the pursuit of honor.
The belief and concept of dishonor in the Greek and Colombian culture of ‘Antigone,’ by Sophocles, and ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold,’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a deciding aspect that blinds characters moral values. It is evident that in both societies Greek and Colombian, a family or an individual without honor is an outcast to the community. As honor plays a drastic role in outlining the culture of the society. Therefore the belief that a perpetrator has brought dishonor upon the family, or community foreshadows punishment for the individual, often conveyed through death.
Every nation has its cultures, and every culture has its people. Like a clay figure, the people of a culture are inevitably shaped by what makes that culture unique and where it will lead them in a world composed of many different ones. The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros and In The Time Of The Butterflies by Julia Alvarez present two contrasting cultures, one that is depicted through a poor Latino neighborhood in Chicago, and the other on a viciously dictated Spanish island. The roles of men and women along with the importance of an organized church bring with it the image of the residing living condition of the culture, and whether its for the better or worse, the people existing in that culture are a mirror reflection of what that culture is. The vivid expressions of gender roles and the influences of religion in the two extravagantly differing cultural societies in The House on Mango and In The Time Of The Butterflies precisely shaped what became of the characters’ personality and characteristics in their struggling efforts to work their way toward goals and dreams.
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
Ford Maddox Ford famously thought that an author should open with “the note that suggests the whole book.” In the short story “Death and the Compass,” Borges’ third sentence accomplishes this: “But he did divine,” he writes of his detective-protagonist Erik Lönnrot, “the secret morphology of the vicious series.” Indeed, fixation on shape and form, pattern and symmetry – for conformation – is fundamental to Borges’ story.
McGuirk, Bernard and Richard Cardwell, edd. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: New Readings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
Shirley Jackson, The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, and The Cask of Amontillado by Edgar Allen Poe,
Our reputations are beliefs and opinions that are held by our friends, family and even complete strangers about bout us. Someone’s reputation determines how they will be seen before even meeting them, almost like a first impression. Which is why your reputation is something you need to handle with care and protect, however some will go to extremes in doing this for instance the play The Crucible, written by Arthur Miller. It is a look into what it was like back in the 1800’s during the Salem witch trails. During this play Miller makes the strong argument of the importance of reputation and the countless ways people will protect it. In the play this occurs with many of the characters some more than others yet it’s of importance to everyone in some way or another. The protection of one’s reputation also occurs outside of the play, an example of this would be in politics and sports. In the play The Crucible, Author Miller makes the argument that reputation is incredibly important and people will go to great lengths such as betrayal and lying to protect it, quite often ones morality will become altered when protecting their reputation.
In life it is necessary to have fantasy, because without it, life would be dull and meaningless. Life would be so different without dreams, since they are what motivate humans to keep on moving forward in order to achieve their goals. This is what Jorge Luis Borges is trying to explain to the reader in the book Ficciones which is very confusing, but also very deep in meaning. These stories demonstrate a theme of reality vs. fiction which is fascinating because in many of the readings fantasy is required at some point to accomplish a purpose or goal. Each unique story hides a meaning in the text which is a lesson to be learned. The confusion that is caused is similar to a labyrinth in which the reader gets lost. The message is hidden within the story so; it causes confusion to the reader. Events in the story suggest that the story is fiction, because most of the stories have existent scenery. The timing in some stories is from an event or tragedy that has occurred around that date. The reader realizes later on in the stories that unrealistic events began to occur which are impossible to take place in real life. This is when our minds become entangled with facts from our world and others form the impossible.
...r left the house in the first place, that someone must have disappointed her on the way to church. The grandmother also points out that Mina went to the bathroom twice that morning, and that she notices that once she turns off the light at night, Mina turns on her flashlight, to write letters. Mina is once again feeling her space is invaded, and she swears at her grandmother, but because Mina never swears her grandmother knows it is coming from a place of guilt. The last sentence, which is a quote from the grandmother in which she says, “ I'm crazy...you haven't thought of sending me to the madhouse so long as I don't start throwing stones.” The ciche of not throwing stones in glass houses comes to mind, meaning that Mina’s grandmother is staying in her “place” as long as she is not revealing the injustice and sacrilege that is going on in the house, or in the world.
In Federico García Lorca’s La Casa de Bernarda Alba, a tyrant woman rules over her five daughters and household with absolute authority. She prevents her daughters from having suitors and gives them little to no freedom, especially with regard to their sexualities and desires. They must conform to the traditional social expectations for women through sewing, cleaning, as well as staying pure and chaste. While, as John Corbin states in The Modern Language Review, “It was entirely proper for a respectable woman in [Bernarda’s] position to manage her household strictly and insist that the servants keep it clean, to defend its reputation, ensure the sexual purity of her daughters, and promote advantageous marriages for them,” Bernarda inordinately
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, author of Love in the Time of Cholera, depicts his characters by having them act in certain ways, in ways of love and care towards others. Each character acts certain ways to certain people, either to gain respect, love, friendship or hatred. Marquez’s character Florentino Ariza, is desperately in love with Fermina Daza, a beautiful young lady (early in the novel), who promises him her hand in marriage then breaks that promise by marrying Dr. Juvenal Urbino. Although heartbroken Ariza’s love for Fermina would still continue over many long years, thus showing how much he was in love with her.
In The House of Bernarda Alba readers get to know Bernarda the mother of five daughters. Bernarda often comes across as a mean woman who just wishes to control her daughters, while in reality she just wants to do what she feels will best protect them. “Until I leave this house feet first, I will make the decisions—my own, and yours!” (Lorca, 223) This makes Bernarda sound like bit of a control freak, as she is basically telling her daughter Angustias that over her dead body will she fight with her sister Magdalena; however, she really is just trying to keep peace and protect them. Then in The Family of Pascual Duarte readers are introduced to Pascual’s mother, whose actions do not show that she cares much about protecting her children. “My father and mother didn’t get along at all. They had been badly brought up, were endowed with no special virtues, and could not resign themselves to their lot.” (Cela, 24) Pascual’s parents, but especially his mother, did not care enough about the safety and well-being of the child in the home to lay aside their differences or find a better way to deal with the problems at hand. Not only that, but it could be a fight over the simplest of things. “So that any circumstance,
Gabriel Garcia Collected Novellas: Chronicle of A Death Foretold. New York[:] Harper Collins Publishers, 1990.