The Chronicles Of A Death Foretold By Gabriel Garcia-Márquez

In the novella The Chronicles of a Death Foretold, Gabriel García-Márquez criticizes society’s descent into the lowest levels of morality by encouraging Santiago Nasar 's murder. Garcia-Marquez reveals the sins of Santiago while subsequently uncovering the evils of the community who betrayed him. In doing so, he shifts perspective from the seven fatal wounds inflicted upon Santiago as a representation of the sins he committed to how the sins of the community were the his real cause of death. To effectively assert his religious beliefs of how such immorality will have to answer to God, García-Márquez personifies the seven deadly sins through the characters and events in this novella. To personify envy, García-Márquez represents the wedding

García-Márquez implicates Angela as one of Santiago’s killer by committing a crime of lust with him and then openly expressing it, making her the “profanation of the symbols of purity” (García-Márquez 41). García-Márquez entails through Angela how lust has overtaken society to commit such indiscretions under the name of God and asserts that after such an act one is stripped of any honor and there is no dignity left in the individual. However, García-Márquez reflects his religious beliefs that God does forgive even the worst immoralities if a sinner acknowledges their wrongdoing and enduring the punishment through Angela’s response to her’ banishment’ from society. García-Márquez specifically recounts how Angela succumbs to her fate by accepting the blows from her mother as they “hurt less because they knew she were for him”(García-Márquez 91). He transforms Angela to embody a survivor of lust and the survivor of a society, emphasizing how Angela is the only sin forgiven as she too ‘died’ emotionally for her sin from her banishment. Through this perspective, García-Márquez implies that Angela Vicario is reborn and “became a virgin just for him” (García-Márquez 93). He reinforces the idea of forgiveness for a sin and hence regains the innocence of mind and heart one has as a virgin. García-Márquez embodies lust through Angela to explain how people were controlled by sins

Poncio Vicario had put so much effort to maintain pride for his work and himself “ he’d lost his sight… in order to maintain the honor of the house” (García-Márquez 30). García-Márquez highlights the significance of the old man’s value in self-pride to explain how Poncio was punished for all the pride he emitted. This pride was essentially embedded into the minds of his sons, which in fact lead to the death of Santiago as the twins come to believe it is a “horrible duty that has befallen them” to restablish their self-pride (García-Márquez 57) . The author uses him to prove how, contrary to Angela, if one does not learn from their wrongdoings and in this case passes such sins to others they will be punished for life. Moreover, Pura Vicario continues the chain of deadly sins personified in the Vicario family as García-Márquez uses her as a tool to personify how wrath can overcome an individual. García-Márquez utilizes irony of how Pura is remarked to look “like a nun” (García-Márquez 31) and “a saint” (García-Márquez 46) but developed into a woman of complete anger which she felt after losing pride and dignity due to Angela and went “beyond what was possible to make Angela die in her life’ (García-Márquez 89). The author specifically personified wrath