TUESDAY, APRIL 1, 2008
Week XII
Screen caps from the 1987 Italian film version of the novel, Cronaca di una morte annunciata
Gabriel García Márquez's novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold lets readers know from the first sentence that Santiago Nasar will be murdered. Instead of simply leading readers up to a climactic death scene (although the murder is still pretty climactic), Márquez takes us on a tour around town to meet different townspeople in order to ascertain their motivations about how they choose to respond to the news of the impending murder. In doing so, Márquez weaves in criticisms about various social justice issues such as poverty, the inequitable distribution of wealth, superficial talk versus action, and the limited opportunities for women in the town.
For this entry, choose one of the novel's characters, even Santiago, and close-read one passage about the character. In your close-reading analysis discuss how Márquez's treatment of the character - through characterization, dialogue, imagery, etc. - incorporates discussion/reflection/criticism of one of the social justice issues explored in the novel.
In the beginning of the book, we are introduced to Victoria Guzman, the cook at Santiago's house. When Santiago enters the kitchen on the day in which he is going to be murdered to get his breakfast, we are told of how Victoria had a love affair with his father, and after the affair ended, how embittered she became. And then we are told that this bitterness then carried over to how she viewed Santiago. That, and the fact that she knows that he has had his eyes on her daughter. To sum it all up, she states that "He was just like his father ... A shit." (10). However, on that morning, she becomes disturbed when she observes Santiago's horror at the way she rips out the intestines of the rabbits she is quartering for lunch. And here it seems like the author is lecturing us on previously held judgements. It seems that the reason for Victoria's disturbance is because even though she hates Santiago, because of his father and because of who he is too, she sees that there is also some good in him as well. It seems as if she observes a latent sense of innocence in him, which upsets her because this is not how she previously viewed him, and also because we are told that she knows of the plan to murder Santiago, and that perhaps, if she had agreed with it before, she is now starting to doubt whether Santiago really deserves to die.
