His writing style is one of those that enchant you completely. He is known to weave his stories wrapped in magical realism. I have heard so much about Marquez’s books. “There had never been a death so foretold.” Yet if everyone knew the murder was going to happen, why did no one intervene to try and stop it? The more that is learned, the less is understood, and as the story races to its inexplicable conclusion, an entire society–not just a pair of murderers-is put on trial. Her distraught family forced her to name her first lover, and her twin brothers announced their intention to murder Santiago Nasar for dishonoring their sister. Just hours after marrying the beautiful Angela Vicario, everyone agrees, Bayardo San Roman returned his bride in disgrace to her parents.
After all, Marquez includes phrases like this:
#MAGICAL REALISM IN CHRONICLE OF A DEATH FORETOLD FREE#
It also means that you can feel free to laugh. So what does that mean for you? It means that you should keep in mind Marquez isn't trying to depict what would actually happen in a typical Latin American or Colombian town. In this case, Santiago gets killed right in the middle of town. Just like the War of Warcraft episode of South Park, Marquez takes something that is already prevalent in his community and brings it to the extreme logical conclusion. The men and women in this town are hyperbolic in the way that they adhere to gender roles. Marquez satirizes the culture of machismo that is prevalent in many Latin American communities. Why should we believe anything else the narrator says if he tells us that someone didn't eat or sleep for 100 days? If he can be wrong about that, what else can he be wrong about? Satireĭespite this being a murder novel, it's actually pretty funny. These little elements of magical realism are not overwhelming, but they actually help to destabilize the legitimacy of the narrative. Someone sees a vision of Santiago going back to his room when he had never entered the house. The Vicario brothers stay awake for 100 days. In certain cultures, things like this are so common that it would be easy to ignore it as an element of magical realism. She had a well-earned reputation as an accurate interpreter of other people's dreams, provided they were told her before eating, but she hadn't noticed any ominous augury in those two dreams of her son's, or in the other dreams of trees he'd described to her on the mornings preceding his death. Instead of hordes of ants that devour entire houses, you get things like this: Marquez doesn't hit you over the head with the surreal elements. In this novel, you're kind of getting magical realism on a diet. He might not have invented it, but he's probably the author most famous for his use of magical realism in his novels. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's name is basically synonymous with magical realism. So our mystery remains a mystery to the very last page. Instead, things get more and more confusing and nothing is ever resolved. Normally a mystery gets clearer and clearer as the story goes on and is finally solved at the end. The narrator is kind of playing the role of the journalist, piecing together testimony and evidence for this murder case.īut here is where Marquez makes a giant change in the way a mystery novel is supposed to work. That's exactly what's happening in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Something happens and the narrator or protagonist spends the rest of the story trying to unravel the mystery behind the event. MysteryĮveryone who's read a Dan Brown novel knows how a mystery works. These are not genres that you normally see together, but somehow Marquez manages to make it all work. We honestly wouldn't be very surprised if this is the only mystery–magical realism–satire that you have ever read in your entire life.
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