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Summary: My thoughts...
Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a masterpiece of irony and satire. It follows the incidents leading up to the death of Santiago Nasar and then shows the repercussions of his death. Marquez uses satire to poke fun at everything from the church to legal systems in general. His absurdly ironic series of improbable events makes this book one of the most humorous pieces of literature I have ever encountered. The investigative style the book is written in creates an atmosphere that truly makes the book come alive. Every detail is minutely explained and described by the brilliant skill of Marquez. The novel is not without its problems. One failing of this book is that the numerous names all sound the same. This makes the book very hard to follow. It is not a book for casual reading. Also, the irony is almost more than a normal person can bear. It left me with the same feeling I have when I'm watching a horror movie and one character goes in the haunted house to investigate the strange noise. If you find yourself yelling at the characters in horror films than this book is not for you, but if you love satire and a good mystery I would recommend this book.
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Summary: Review of a Great Novel
Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a brilliantly written novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This suspense filled novel keeps the pages turning. Marquez uses the techniques of combining an investigative report and the theme of machismo all into one to make a great novel. Satire plays another important part in bringing this book's best aspects out. Marquez satirixes religion. Within this Colombian community a major focus is religion. The day of this death that is to be foretold, the bishop is to make a stop in this toem. The town has prepared everything for his arrival, but the bishop never stops. He just waves from his boat as he passes by. The judicial system ois another aspect that is satirized.. Two menn are put on trial for killing a man that supposedly took away their sister's virginity. They wait three years in order to be put on trial. The the trial only takes three days to find these two men... I'l leave that for you to find ou tby reading the book. Being a novel based upon machismo also greatly impressed me. Seeing the ways in which family and honorare so sacred in an environment like that and comparing ot to today's society is very interesting. As seen in this novel keeping family honor is very sacred. In their society it must be upheld at any cost, evenif it means death. But today There is rarely anything like that. That's why this book really sparked my interest. I would recommend this book to anybody who enjoys murder mysteries amd pieceing things together.
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Summary: untitled
Review: Irony becomes an important theme in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In my opinion, it is overused. The two men strut around town telling anyone who is in their path that they are on a mission for murder. As the book unravels, the entire town knows about Santiago Nasar and his dark fate except for Santiago himself! The mayor, police, Santiago's friends, and a priest are all aware of this potential murder, however none of them think to tell Santiago! They all expect that he would already know. This irony takes up a good portion of the Chronicle, and I think it becomes frustrating that one event, or rather the build up to the murder, took most of the chronicle. Many other things ironically twist into the foretold death. Santiago Nasar tells Marques, the author, that he does not want any flowers at his funeral because the smell of closed- in flowers had a relation to death, unaware that he will die the next day. A chronicle is a continuous historical account of events arranged in order of time without analysis or interpretation. Marques, a journalist as well as author, shows journalistic style. The flow of the book goes from one character to the next, as if being interviewed. Telling the story as a sequence of different "talks" that Marques had with many townsfolk. He collects different experiences of this day and his investigations added up to create this chronicle.
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Summary: Chronicle Review
Review: In the novel, Chronicle Of A Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, much happened that I disagree with. I believe that the actions of certain characters were unjust and unfair. In the novel, Santiago Nassar was killed because he was accused of taking Angela Vicario's virginity before she was married. This was seen as dishonorable in the Colombian society in which they lived. After she had been wed and was discovered to be a non-virgin, her husband returned her to her family. Angela was beaten, and Angela's two twin brothers, Pablo and Pedro Vicario killed the accused, Santiago Nassar. Despite the fact that Santiago and the Vicario brothers were friends, the brothers avenged their sister's honor by killing Santiago. The two brothers then confessed and went to jail for three years before their trial, because they couldn't afford bail. At the trial they were found innocent and released even though there was no evidence that Santiago was the one who took Angela's virginity. The brothers were released because their killing was seen as an act of honor. In my opinion I think that the murder of Santiago was wrong. Santiago didn't commit the crime he was accused of, yet he was killed anyway. Death is also unreasonable punishment for such a minor act as taking a girl's virginity. Santiago didn't even get a chance to defend himself. It is unfair that Santiago be the one to suffer such severe punishment while Angela gets away with a mere beating from her mother. I think she should've been punished just as harshly as Santiago. After all, she took part in the loss of her virginity also. She wasn't raped, therefore making her just as guilty as Santiago. Another thing about the murder that I thought was unjust was the trial and results. Even though the brothers confessed to the murder and it was seen as an act of honor, it turned out that they killed the wrong guy. Yet they were still released and found innocent, and they showed no remorse. I believe that just the act of murder is punishable, worse yet an unreasonable act of murder. I think that even though the murder was done out of vengeance, the brothers should've been punished for killing the wrong guy, and their friend at that. They took an innocent life and weren't even punished for it. Events in the novel showed some of the flaws of Colombian society, which is controlled by males and therefore women are treated unfairly or unequally by our American standards. Another flaw of Colombian society is that both men and women have little control over their lives because others unlawfully take matters into their own hands. Employing these flaws, Gabriel Garcia Marquez was able to create a novel filled with excitement and controversy.
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Summary: Chronicle: A Different Kind of Satire
Review: It seems that in our present culture, the phrase "nothing is sacred," when attached to a movie or TV show, almost always indicates a push on the boundaries of good taste. This is why Chronicle of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, was such a refreshing read-- the author mercilessly satirizes important institutions, such as religion and the honor code, and does so without using scatological humor as a handicap. The book does contain some "adult" moments, but Mr. Marquez deals with them in an appropriately adult manor, making them funnier than simply spewing language and graphic situations, hoping we will be shocked by the result. In fact, the most startling parts of Chronicle were the ironic touches and the satire that Mr. Marquez is gifted at. Two brothers kill a man in broad daylight, with plenty of witnesses around, and they are found completely innocent in court. This is both a lampoon of the judicial system, which let them off, and the honor code, which was their ill-founded excuse for killing the man (there was no evidence even remotely linking Santiago Nasar, the murdered man, and his supposed de-virginizing of their brother's sister). Waste and extravagance are characteristic of the church in Mr. Marquez' book. The bishop enjoys cockscomb soup, so local residents, anxious for the bishop's arrival, slice the cockscombs off the chickens and throw the rest of the chicken away. To add insult to irony, the bishop never even docks in their city, because the bishop "hates this town." Yes, the novel contains violence, drunkenness, and prostitution, but Chronicle of a Death Foretold is not about these things, and how "shocking" they are to society. Mr. Marquez uses these subjects to depict concepts far more interesting; criticisms of our laws, customs, and opinions are what truly fuel this classic. Chronicle reminded me that there are far more lines to cross than simply those of good taste.
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Summary: Questions and Confusion Abound
Review: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a novel that begins with clarity and ends in confusion. In the very first line the reader is informed that there is going to be a murder, and if they are apt enough they may also determine that the victim will be Santiago Nasar, yet as the story unfolds the ambiguity mounts. Why wasn't the murder prevented? Did Santiago Nasar truly deserve to die? These questions are never answered by Marquez but rather left appropriately for the reader to discern on his or her own. Why leave it up to the reader? Perhaps because as a character in his own novel, Garcia Marquez does not even know the answers to those questions himself. Twenty-seven years after this event actually took place, he decided to go back and try to solve the mystery. One of his best friends was murdered while he slept in the "apostolic lap" of a whore that was once that same friend's obsession. Yet even after hearing as much as would be told him by remaining townsmembers, the questions remained unanswered, and possibly became only further complicated by discrepancies. Was it sunny or dreary? Why did so many people fail to inform Santiago that his life was in jeopardy? Where did Bayardo San Roman come from and where did he go? Was the murder justifiable? Nothing could be answered but by the testimony of the deflowered bride herself, who insisted for eternity that Santiago Nasar was her perpetrator. "Don't beat it to death cousin," she told Garcia Marquez. "He was the one." But should we really believe this woman when she reveals nothing to support her assertion? The town does not, yet they allow a crime to be committed in the name of honor simply because it must. Tradition holds them to moral injustice and corrupt practice of law, and no one, not even Garcia Marquez can penetrate this blindness to discover the truth.
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Summary: Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Review: A Graphic, comical and Tragic novel. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marques. A very good short novel. It's about a man named Santiago Nasar and the last day of his life. This novel will keep you glued to each page, making you ask what will happen next.
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Summary: Good but not Great
Review: I recently read this novella as an introduction to the writing of Marquez as one Amazon reviewer suggested, and while I agree with most of the excellent conclusions rendered by other reviewers of this work, I must say that I did not find reading this book all that fulfilling or enjoyable. I want to like Marquez, since seemingly the whole world does upon reading him, but I labored through this book without feeling any great sympathy or concern for any of its characters. Anyone who has read the synopsis of the story above knows what it is about. Set in a small Colombian town, the novella chronicles the murder of one of the town's leading citizens, Santiago Nasar, by two twin brothers who are advised that Nasar has brought dishonor on the family by "deflowering" their sister. The twins' sister, Angela, is brought back home on her wedding night when her husband learns she is not a virgin, after she abandons any plans for trying to keep her past a secret. Angela advises her family that it was Nasar who slept with her in the past, and thus her brothers set out, while telling the whole town of their intentions, to avenge their sister's loss of innocence. The story is narrated over 20 years after the fact by a friend of Nasar, who has supposedly read investigative files and interviewed all persons involved in the case, and the book reads much like an extended newspaper story of the murder and its aftermath. The plot is non-linear, you know about the murder from page one of the story and you obtain details of Nasar's autopsy, and of the twins' subsequent incarceration while awaiting trial, before you are given the disturbing details about the crime in the last few pages. The is much irony and fatalism here, as the victim Nasar is seemingly the only person in town who is ignorant of the brothers' plans to kill him, leading the reader (as well as the narrator) to wonder aloud whether he really did sleep with Angela. Marquez reveals how numerous persons in the town had opportunities to stop the crime, or at least to try and warn Nasar and hide him, but a pervading sense of the inevitable leads the victim to his unsuspecting doom. Perhaps the non-appearance of a bishop, who was supposed to visit the town with great fanfare but who never disembarked from his boat on the day of the murder, is meant to symbolize the inability of the Church to prevent cruelty amidst a village with an antiquated sense of honor. All in all, while Marquez writes skillfully with a prose style that is neither stark nor overly wordy, I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed that I wasn't more wrapped up in the story. Perhaps I had expected too much based on the abundance of praise the author has received here.
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Summary: A great work by one of my favorite authors
Review: I loved One Hundred Years of Solitude; the first time I read it I immediately started over from the beginning. Having just read Chronicle of a Death Foretold, though, I must admit I like this novel even better. (Now I'm reading Love In the Time of Cholera-- woo-hoo!) Though a rather short novel, the scope of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is amazing. It describes the last three days before the death of Santiago Nasar, a young bachelor of an unnamed small village in South America. When Bayardo San Roman discovers that Angela Vicario, his bride, is not a virgin on their wedding night, she is returned to her family's home in disgrace. Her brothers demand to know who her seducer was, and when she reveals that it was Santiago Nasar, they vow to avenge the dishonor. For three days, the brothers Pedro and Pablo march around town, ostentatiously sharpening their knives and announcing their intention of killing Nasar. While every villager is aware of this, out of cowardice, malice, or misunderstanding, not one tells him until it is too late. With his characteristic hidden irony and unflinching frankness, Garcia Marquez explores the bystander effect, the rigidity of tradition and small town mores, and of course the inevitability (?) of fate.
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Summary: The Presence of Death in Life
Review: The first sentence of this harrowing, surrealistic novella concerns itself with the murder of the wealthy, twenty-one year old Santiago Nasar and every page that follows only serves to broaden and enlarge this action. The novella, a narrative written twenty-seven years after the murder by Nasar's journalist friend, serves as a detailed history of the hours leading up to the crime. The entire population of a fictional Latin American village comprise the cast of characters and as we become privy to their actions and memories, the one certainty we learn is that everyone had a part to play in this crime. The night before the murder, Angela Vicario had married Bayardo San Roman in a lavish and costly ceremony. However, when San Roman learns that Angela is not a virgin he returns her to her mother immediately. When pressed to name the man who stole her virginity and disgraced the family name, Angela answers, "Santiago Nasar." Nothing points to the truthfulness of Angela's assertion, but her twin brothers, Pablo and Pedro, who are pig butchers by profession, sharpen their knives and begin their search for Nasar. Although "there had never been a death more foretold," every one of the town's citizens has some reason, valid or not, for doing little or nothing to prevent the death of Nasar. Even Nasar, himself, until the final moments, seems oblivious to what every other person in the town is well aware of. Amazingly, he seems to either feel himself above death or simply resigned to his fate. The narrator of Chronicle of a Death Foretold presents many instances and situations that could have saved the life of Nasar yet failed to do so, underscoring one of Garcia Marquez's signature themes--irony. Some of the town's citizens, like Victoria Guzman, Nasar's cook, have private reasons for wishing him dead. Many assume that Nasar must surely be aware of the danger himself, while others simply discount the Vicario brothers announcement as drunken boasting. By the time Nasar walks onto the dock to meet the visiting bishop's boat, everyone there knows how and why he's going to be killed. And, when the Vicario brothers begin their attack, no one lifts a finger to stop it. During the final, surrealistic pages of the book, Nasar rises from the bloodied ground and dusts off his own entrails before "entering the house of his mother" and announcing, "They've killed me, Wene child," as he falls on his face in the kitchen. Garcia Marquez illuminates, not only the duplicity behind the Latin "code of honor," but the hypocrisy of the women as well, a hypocrisy that makes a mockery of the community's strict code of behavior. The little understood "cult of machismo" is also explored and Garcia Marquez shows us how the men's strict adherence to that cult contributed heavily to the death of Nasar. While the narrator of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is unable to come to any firm conclusions regarding Nasar's death, he does show us the overwhelming inevitability of it all. Too many forces, including apathy, assumption and even chance are all moving in the same direction and all contribute to the final, harrowing outcome. This sense of the inevitable pervades every line of the book and we know there could have been no way the life of Nasar could have been spared. Although told in a straightforward (though non-linear) manner, Chronicle of a Death Foretold is not a straightforward story. It is complex, shocking and powerful and surrelistic in its approach. It concerns itself with the power of death in life and how one death affects and transforms an entire community. The language used in Chronicle of a Death Foretold is, at times, shocking and even brutal, but it is perfectly suited to the shocking and brutal story it tells. In an early interview, Garcia Marquez mentioned the debt he owned to Juan Rulfo, author of Pedro Paramo. Although Chronicle of a Death Foretold is highly original, Rulfo's influence can clearly be seen. The two novellas parallel each other in their surrealistic qualities, the ever-present sense of death and meaninglessness and the inevitability of life's final outcome. Both works are characterized by unrelieved darkness and a descent into something unamed, from which it is impossible to return. As with all of Garcia Marquez's works, this book is flawless. It is a highly rewarding, yet disturbing work that forces us to look at the inevitable presence of death in life and the uncertainty of even the next moment.
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