Tradition In Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

The society in which A Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez takes place strongly emphasizes the importance of following tradition. The novella depicts the story of Santiago Nasar, who is accused of compelling Angela Vicario to break tradition by participating in cohabitation and is later killed because he causes the family’s honor to diminish. In the setting created by Márquez, social expectations, such as abiding by tradition, are standards that the members of the society are expected to uphold. Certain societal expectations, such as the beliefs about honor, have various interpretations which result in slightly different ideas about honor among the main characters. Márquez’s portrayal of the Vicario family’s …show more content…
In the novella, it is claimed that before Angela was married, she had sexual relations with another male and was no longer a virgin, and because of this, she broke the society’s honor code created by Márquez. In this society, a female can diminish her family’s honor by having a sexual relationship before she is married, which is what Angela is believed to have done. This situation exemplifies how Angela breaks the society’s honor code, but later when she is living in exile as her punishment, her acceptance of her exile contributes to her new interpretation and belief in the honor code as requirement to be followed. After Angela is returned to her mother by Bayardo, she is exiled and required to pay for her sins. When the narrator talks with Angela years after the event, “she was so mature and witty that it was difficult to believe that she was the same person… She had nothing in common with the person who’d been obliged to marry without love at the age of twenty” (89). The narrator uses an admiring tone to convey the appreciation he has for Angela’s ability to move on with her life as seen by describing her as “mature” and “witty.” The admiring tone the narrator uses when describing Angela contrasts with her personality before she was placed in exile. The tone emphasises her evolving interpretation of the society’s honor code because it demonstrates the changes she goes through as a character as a result of her actions. The changes Angela makes in order to evolve and eventually comply with the honor code convey her new personal definition of the honor code as obligatory and characterizes her as a rule follower. While she did not follow society’s expectations before, her new personality shows she does now. Through Angela’s evolving