Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Analysis

Close-knit communities are an important yet rare feature in the world today. However, what makes close-knit communities unique is when almost every member shares the same cultural background, something that the community in Chronicle of a Death Foretold embodies. Being a part of a cultural community also triggers a heightened sense of cultural responsibility that comes alone with values that if broken, evoke responses and opinions within the whole community. Gabriel García Márquez highlights the sense of cultural responsibility within a close-knit community in his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Through point of view, the motif of religion, and fragmentation of time, Márquez conveys the idea that cultural responsibility of the characters led to the whole community being blamed for Santiago Nasar’s death. The novel’s point of view of an unnamed and uninvolved narrator helps relay information to the reader that many characters were aware of Santiago’s impending murder yet did not take action because they believed that the murder was justified by cultural means. One character that fits this mold is Prudencia Cotes, Pablo Vicario’s fiancé. She knew about the murder as early as the morning of, and recounts that “‘[she] knew what they were up to..and [she] didn’t only agree, [she] never would have married him if he hadn’t done what a man should do”’ (Márquez 62). She believed that Pablo should do it to win back some of his family’s honor that was lost when his sister,