Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, uncovers the mysterious events leading up to the unjustified death of protagonist, Santiago Nasar. Twenty-seven years after Nasar’s death, the novel’s narrator highlights the social factors, such as pride and honor, that relentlessly control Nasar’s murderers: the Vicario brothers. Not only do male characters in the novel inflict violence upon Santiago Nasar but they also abuse women, strengthening their culturally inherited masculine pride known as machismo. Through the use of sex and violence, Marquez underlines his male characters with machismo, introducing encounters such as sexual harassment, brutality, shame, and pleasure.
Repetition of predatory images in Marquez’s tale detail …show more content…
The narrator introduces violence at the beginning of the novel to foreshadow the brutality that follows. Brutality takes several forms in the novel, from pain inflicted on animals, to pain inflicted on others, and ultimately plain inflicted on a one's self and family. The brutality of social conventions surrounding tasks such as preparing a meal takes the form of “[pulling] out the insides of a rabbit by the roots and [throwing] the steaming guts to the dogs” (29). The gruesome image of disemboweling the rabbits foreshadows the “barbarous work” the Vicario brothers perform in the murder of Santiago Nasar (20). By foreshadowing the barbarous action earlier in the novel, these behaviors become normalized, thus decreasing the intensity of such brutal actions. The reader sympathizes with the brothers because their brutal killing serves to defend their honor. The fictional society accepts brutality and violence as a typical male response to a dispute. When a male character fails to defend his masculinity, their family suffers because without a strong identity a character cannot exist in Marquez’s fictitious society. Like the Vicario brothers, Bayardo San Roman wishes to uphold a high degree of masculinity, yet he brings shame to his family by pursuing relations with a non virgin bride. Incapable of regaining his honor, Bayardo allows his family to suffer from his failure. Marquez foreshadows the Roman family’s fate by creating suspense. Unlike Angela who holds on to her identity, Bayardo’s family must “[pull] out strands of hair by the roots and [wail] loudly” on top of a hill because their male figure has failed (50). Violence manifests where masculine stability lacks. As the plot unwinds, Marquez develops a motif of machismo to explain the common violence
Repetition of predatory images in Marquez’s tale detail …show more content…
The narrator introduces violence at the beginning of the novel to foreshadow the brutality that follows. Brutality takes several forms in the novel, from pain inflicted on animals, to pain inflicted on others, and ultimately plain inflicted on a one's self and family. The brutality of social conventions surrounding tasks such as preparing a meal takes the form of “[pulling] out the insides of a rabbit by the roots and [throwing] the steaming guts to the dogs” (29). The gruesome image of disemboweling the rabbits foreshadows the “barbarous work” the Vicario brothers perform in the murder of Santiago Nasar (20). By foreshadowing the barbarous action earlier in the novel, these behaviors become normalized, thus decreasing the intensity of such brutal actions. The reader sympathizes with the brothers because their brutal killing serves to defend their honor. The fictional society accepts brutality and violence as a typical male response to a dispute. When a male character fails to defend his masculinity, their family suffers because without a strong identity a character cannot exist in Marquez’s fictitious society. Like the Vicario brothers, Bayardo San Roman wishes to uphold a high degree of masculinity, yet he brings shame to his family by pursuing relations with a non virgin bride. Incapable of regaining his honor, Bayardo allows his family to suffer from his failure. Marquez foreshadows the Roman family’s fate by creating suspense. Unlike Angela who holds on to her identity, Bayardo’s family must “[pull] out strands of hair by the roots and [wail] loudly” on top of a hill because their male figure has failed (50). Violence manifests where masculine stability lacks. As the plot unwinds, Marquez develops a motif of machismo to explain the common violence