Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Magical Realism Analysis

In the words of Gabriel Garcia Márquez, one of the most renowned Latin American authors, “The interpretation of our reality through patterns not our own, only serves to make us ever more unknown, ever less free, ever more solitary.” These words echo throughout one of Márquez’s most brilliant works, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, published in 1981. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is infused with magical elements, which contradict the journalistic nature of the novel. The result is a suspended reality caught in between two worlds, each attempting to create a fictional world out of the other. The author leaves space for the reader to disentangle fact from fiction as they please. In this novel, magical realism carries more than mere entertainment …show more content…
According to the legend of El Dorado, there was a lost city of gold, located somewhere in South America. When the Spaniards arrived in South America, they relentlessly searched for El Dorado, but never found it. In relation to the novel, the town is made up of descendants from the original Spanish colonizers who went in search of El Dorado, but eventually decided to settle in South America. One such character is Bayardo San Román who “arrived on the weekly boat with some saddlebags decorated with silver that matched the buckle of his belt and the ring on his boots. He was around thirty years old, but they were well-concealed, because he had the waist of a novice bullfighter, golden eyes, and a skin slowly roasted by saltpeter” (Márquez, 25). The same way the Spanish colonizers went in search of treasure, Bayardo went in search of a woman to wed. By this analogy, the woman is comparable to treasure, which indirectly hints at machismo, the belief in male supremacy. This shows that magical realism helps develop themes throughout the novel. The following passage expresses the sexist mentality of the