Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Gabriel García Márquez) and The House of Bernarda Alba (Frederico García Lorca)

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.