Role Of Death In Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

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Santiago Nasar is going to die. There is no doubt, no questioning, no second-guessing this reality in writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book, Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Set in a small Colombian town during the early 50s, Santiago Nasar is a young and rich man destined to die at the hands of the Vicario brothers for deflowering their sister, Angela Vicario, of her virginity. To restore honor to their family name, the two brothers plot to kill the accused protagonist of the alleged crime. However, while Santiago remains in the dark to his impending demise, the rest of the town, aware of the murder plot, does nothing to prevent it. In the wake of the murder, the townspeople desperately want to believe that Santiago Nasar was ill fated to die in order to evade the moral guilt of having killed an innocent man in their ritualized society. Although Santiago Nasar is murdered at the hands of the Vicario brothers, the entire town shares a role in his death. On the morning that Santiago Nasar is to be killed, Pablo and Pedro Vicario tell everyone they see that they are going to "cut his …show more content…

So instead they try to explain and understand Santiago Nasar's death as an unavoidable force driven by a divine nature. It was the only consolation the narrator could draw from Santiago Nasar missing the anonymous note under the door that warned him of the plot against his life. Or the door that was open in the rear of the house that the protagonist could have fled to during the attack he faced from the Vicario brothers. The role of fate is the classic perpetrator just by example: "There had never been a death more foretold," the narrator tells us (p.46). To Marquez, fate seemed to be dominating the life and ultimate death of Santiago Nasar. The bad omens, dreams, sighs in the weather, all appeared to be telltale indications that Santiago Nasar was destined to die from his

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