Chronicle Of A Death Foretold: A Social Commentary

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: a Social Commentary

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes many of the cultural influences on a town. Throughout the novel, it appears as though he is making judgments on the character’s actions through their descriptions. The two major aspects that he focuses on are religion and tradition. Through Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s controversial presentation of religion and tradition, his social commentary in Chronicle of a Death Foretold shows the tragic repercussions when tradition unequivocally dominates society.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez used religion as an evaluation of the characters. The story of Santiago Nasar’s death had multiple similarities to the crucifixion of Jesus. This purposeful comparison allows further judgment of their
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Machismo is the strong sense of masculine pride or an exaggerated sense of power. All of the men in the novel exhibit characteristics of machismo that strongly affect their actions. For example, a portion of the motive for Santiago Nasar’s death was to prove the masculinity of the Vicario brothers. They wanted to not only defend the honor of their family, but also demonstrate that they had an immense amount of power and strength. Once Santiago died, Clotide Armenta thought that was the “height of machismo” (63). So not only did the murder redeem the honor in the Vicario name, but it also proved that the brothers exhibited machismo qualities. Furthermore, marianismo dominated a majority of the female character’s actions. Pura Vicario made sure to teach Angela the significance of marianismo. According to the narrator, Pura raised her family strictly to the expectations of their culture, “the girls had been reared to get married” (31). Pura pressed Angela to marry Bayardo San Roman, which led to her accusation that Santiago Nasar was the perpetrator and eventually his

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