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Chronicle of A Death Foretold

1) Chronicle of a Death Foretold is considered a postmodern novel that rejects totalizing narratives in favor of partial and fragmented stories. It is inspired by a real murder in Colombia. 2) The novel uses multiple narratives and perspectives to reconstruct the events leading to the murder of Santiago Nasar, who is foretold to die but not warned. 3) It challenges conventions by making the protagonist ordinary rather than heroic and portraying the murderers sympathetically. Irony and absurdity permeate the story.

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Gobinath Sundaram
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1K views2 pages

Chronicle of A Death Foretold

1) Chronicle of a Death Foretold is considered a postmodern novel that rejects totalizing narratives in favor of partial and fragmented stories. It is inspired by a real murder in Colombia. 2) The novel uses multiple narratives and perspectives to reconstruct the events leading to the murder of Santiago Nasar, who is foretold to die but not warned. 3) It challenges conventions by making the protagonist ordinary rather than heroic and portraying the murderers sympathetically. Irony and absurdity permeate the story.

Uploaded by

Gobinath Sundaram
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Chronicle of a Death Foretold as a

Postmodern Novel
The turmoil that the Western society witnessed in the aftermath of the
destruction of two wars of twentieth century was not so easy to overcome. The
era that was ushered in saw the rapid transformation of all that was familiar to
the west. The social and cultural scenario in the West was in a state of flux as
the post-war world witnessed several economical and political upheavals
along with revolutionary technological developments. In literature, it
constructed a discourse that rejected totalizing narratives and instead believed
in partial, fragmented and incomplete narratives. Postmodernist fiction soon
became an international phenomenon.

Garcia Marquez through his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold presented a postmodern


masterpiece. The novel was inspired from Garcia Marquez’s own life. A gruesome killing of
his own friend in Sucre, Colombia (1951) in the name of honour was turned into a complex
and rich plot of this novella. The story is an attempt to piece together the fatal day when a
young man is murdered, for having seduced and deflowered a young woman, who is
disowned by her outraged husband and is returned to her family.
Written in the vein of popular literary genre of postmodernism i.e. a detective fiction,
Chronicles of a Death Foretold, helps in reinstating what Linda Hutcheon, in her phenomenal
work A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction calls “the presence of the past”.
As per Hutcheon, the most important concept of postmodernism is to see the past with critical
eyes, Marquez’s narrator, is a journalist, who comes back to his hometown in order to
reconstruct the events that led to the butchering of his friend Santiago Nasar. Garcia
Marquez’s narrator is not the omniscient narrators of the past. On the contrary, this is an
indecisive, subjective and hesitant narrator who finds it difficult to analyse the past incidents
from an objective point of view.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold contains multiple narratives, that is an amalgamation of


facts, feelings, imaginations and memories of all the characters whom the narrator
investigates in order to arrive at the crux of the death of Santiago Nasar. All of these
narrations are peppered with several surreal and fantastic descriptions about the day and
weather “…but most agreed that them weather was funereal, with a cloudy low sky and the
thick smell of still waters…”
It makes the reader realise that in narrator’s world reality and fantasy coexist. This
postmodern technique of fusing the ridiculous and real and thereby creating an alternative
reality, attained perfection under the hands of Garcia Marquez who had achieved world
recognition for his extra ordinary use of Magic Realism.
Irony the most avidly used technique by the postmodern writers has been suffused into this
work to make it multi faceted. The title, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, makes a mockery of
the process of chronicling as the story line operates in a circular manner; the novella begins
and ends with death. Marquez pushes the envelope with his own deconstruction of the entire
traditional way of presenting a murder investigation. Everyone in the novella is aware that
Santiago Nasar is going to be killed, “There had never been a death more foretold”.
However, no one warns this unfortunate protagonist. Therefore, Garcia Marquez’s title
operates on two levels, the death has been foretold to the readers at the onset and the brothers
who would be avenging their sister’s honour also.
The other irony is the elusive question whether Santiago Nasar was destined to die, to which
the narrator observes:

“… but no matter how much they tossed the story back and forth, no one
could explain to me how poor Santiago Nasar ended up being involved in
such a mix- up.”
Postmodernist novels had started the trend of defying the expectations usually associated
with the main characters of a novel. One is then forced to view this chronicle as a parody or
even a mock tragedy where the protagonist is fated to die. However, the complexity of this
text lies in the categorization of Santiago as the hero. Throughout the entire novel one can’t
help but realise that Santiago was not the typical hero. He was not even a hero but an
ordinary man who had his own fears, own faults and own flaws of character.
Marquez deliberately tantalises the readers with various people’s impression of Santiago in
order to maintain the curiosity and confusion of his readers. On one hand, we have the
narrator stating “by his nature Santiago Nasar was merry and peaceful and
openhearted” (Marquez, 6) and on the other, we have Victoria Guzman, Santiago’s servant
who reveals about him “He was just like his father…A shit” (Marquez, 8). Further, we have
the narrator’s sister Margot who observes “I suddenly realised that there couldn’t have been a
better catch than him”
The detailed autopsy report of Santiago Nasar, prepared by an unqualified priest and the
inability of the entire official authorities to prevent the butchering of Santiago from taking
place, brings the element of absurd in the text to the forefront. The narration also erases the
old beliefs about the inherent evilness about the villains, for Marquez through this novel
shows the murderers of Santiago to be humans who are following their brotherly duty in
avenging the honour of their family and especially their sister. “Their reputation as good
people was so well-founded that no one paid any attention to them….”
Beyond the inversion of narrative technique and the characterization of the hero, even the
traditional path of love is turned upside down in this novel. The narrator mentions that
Angela Vicario was never given the privilege of falling in love as she was brought up in a
strict patriarchal society and at the beginning had detested her suitor Bayardo San Roman, “I
detested conceited men, and I’d never seen one so stuck-up,…” (Marquez, 29). She is forced
to marry this man as nobody in her family views love between the couples as a pre-requisite
to good marriage. Moreover, for Angela’s mother “love can be learned too” (Marquez, 34).
However, Bayardo falls in love with Angela at first sight; but even Bayardo’s love is unable
to overcome his wife’s lack of virtue. Ironically, Angela after being abandoned on the
doorstep of her parent’s house, by her husband realizes that she has now fallen in love with
her husband.

Also Read:
 Paulo Coehlo Bestseller Novel The Alchemist Book Review,
Summary
Therefore what Marquez has achieved through Chronicle of a Death Foretold is to provide
the readers with a novel that is open to multiple readings. It reinforces its important feature of
being comfortable with the self reflexivity, temporal disorder, fragmentation and irony, the
cornerstones of cultural and literary phenomenon called postmodernism. And it is through
texts such as this, that one can attempt to understand a complex phenomenon that has left all
the critics divided in their opinion of whether to praise or to criticize it.

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