"On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on." Chronicle of a Death Foretold, p.1
Chronicle of Death Foretold revolves around the murder of Santiago Nasar which occurred in a small South American town. In this novella, Gabriel Garcia Márquez tells the tragic circumstances that led to Santiago’s demise through the eyes of a narrator investigating Nasar’s murder case by interviewing the town’s folks twenty-seven years after the crime. However, the aim of this investigation is not so much about finding the mystery surrounding Santiago Nasar’s death, the murderers are known and none of them hid their intent to kill the man who had supposedly dishonoured their sister; Chronicle of a Death Foretold mainly focuses on trying to grasp the reasons as to why no one in town, to the exception of one character, tried to prevent Santiago’s murder. This makes Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s novella a remarkable piece of character work. Furthermore, the way the elements are entwined in the story shows the author’s mastery of his craft.
''There had never been a death more foretold" Chronicle of a Death Foretold, p.50
Another aspect of Marquez’s novella that I thought was extremely interesting was how he ensured that the readers would reflect on the notion of passive complicity inherent to the town folks depicted in Chronicle of a Death Foretold who, by their absence of reaction, have played as much of a part in Santiago’s murder as the Vicario brothers. And when the narrator goes to their town and meets with each folk, he rapidly understands that none of them have been capable to move on after Santiago’s death and that they all have come to the realisation that their inaction and unwillingness to believe the Vicario brothers is at the heart of the twenty-one-year-old man’s demise. They share both a collective burden and suffering; the result of their lack of response and failed responsibility. Juggling with both real and surreal scenes, Gabriel Garcia Márquez shows how much of a master he is when it comes to magical realism and how brilliant he is with this genre.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a good place to start when discovering 1982 Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s work and writing style for the first time. I am looking forward to read his other piece of writings, and especially One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Márquez, Gabriel García. Chronicle of a Death Foretold. London, Penguin Books, 2014.