A Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Where does the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez? The Colombian writer is one of the great exponents of 20th century Latin American literature. Without leaving this aside, he began in his footsteps with the pen in newspaper writing; with reports and chronicles. In this lesson from a Professor we will summarize one of the works that allows us to reflect on the narrative limits of journalism and literature: A Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

Index

1. The style of Gabriel García Márquez
2. Plot from Chronicle of a Death Foretold
3. Summary chapter 1 and 2
4. Summary of Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Chapters 3, 4 and 5

A Chronicle of a Death Foretold it is the anticipation of a triumph: it was published just a year before Gabriel García Márquez received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The call magical realism, which consists of representing reality without idealization but with an emotional and overwhelming descriptive charge, is the hallmark of the author's work. And, without a doubt,

Taking the best elements of the chronicle in his journalistic style, Gabo cites sources, gives accurate information, leaves nothing to the author's imagination to make him doubt the verisimilitude of what he is reading. Following Gamboa's prologue, what the writer does is show how "the frontiers of the journalistic chronicle and from literature they dissolve and no data is loose, nothing of what is narrated appears without a prior justification".

In this way a first person narrator, the events are told chronologically and begins with the "end" of the book (the death of the protagonist) to give meaning to the story. It is interesting to mention that the first person does not stand out significantly in Gabo's work. On the contrary, books like Love in the time of cholera, Of loves and demons or even the same One hundred years of loneliness They are written in the third person.

Image: Docsity

Now that we have a general idea of ​​the style and intention that Gabriel García Márquez had with this novel, let's get into the plot of a man who is going to be murdered and there seems to be no factor preventing this crime.

Santiago Nasar, a young man who will be killed for, apparently, having been the cause of Angela being rejected the night before for her marriage to her own husband. From voice to voice, the town learns that Angela's twin brothers will go after Santiago; However, the news of his announced crime does not seem to reach him to allow her to escape and save his life. Throughout 5 chapters we delve into the history and the announced tragedy.

We begin the summary of A Chronicle of a Death Foretold attending to the first chapters of the work.

Chapter 1

About 5:30 in the morning, Santiago wakes up to go to the bouquee to witness an event that has the entire town facing the coast: the arrival of the bishop. The narrator is remembering that moment by bringing up a talk he had with Placida Linero, Santiago's mother. Although he always came out loaded with a gun, like his father, Santiago unloaded his revolver before leaving home.

Although Victoria Guzmán, the house's cook, was serving Santiago food that day and they knew that he would be murdered, they did not comment on a single word. At 6 am the young man left home, the streets of the city kept the residues of the previous night: the celebration of a wedding.

Pedro and Pablo Vicario, twin brothers of Angela, the bride who should have gotten engaged in the night, felt the hangover from the revelry and three days without sleep. They would be the assassins of Santiago and although he passed in front of them at that instant in the morning, the crime would not yet be committed.

Episode 2

Bayardo San Román, a man in his thirties since he had arrived on a ship a year before the murder, was the man who was supposed to marry the night before. However, he would end up rejecting his wife, Angela, for not being a virgin.

Their relationship began with little gossip and gifts, when Angela's parents noticed Bayardo's intentions, they asked Pedro and Pablo to return the gifts for the terms they wanted. After a while they returned with the gift in hand and with Bayardo happy on the spree. Finally, the family agreed to the wedding.

After the celebration, at dawn, Bayardo San Román rejected his wife and decided to leave the town. The Vicario brothers found Angela in the house with her face beaten. Her mother Pura hers would leave with a message to her grave: that night when Bayardo brought her home, she punched him for two hours straight. When his brothers asked him who had caused the problem, the narrator tells us about the girlfriend's reaction:

“She took just long enough to say the name. She looked for him in the darkness, she found him at first sight among the many and many confusing names of this world and the other, and he left it nailed to the wall with his accurate dart, like a butterfly without agency whose sentence was written from forever.

"Santiago Nasar," he said. "

We continue to know the work of García Márquez to, now, talk about the next and last chapters of the novel.

Chapter 3

Pedro and Pablo Vicario went out in search of big knives to kill Santiago. At this point, the narrator has already told in the previous chapters that he was a friend of the protagonist and that he in the distance he had seen and learned about all the crime, only that he was writing it 27 years later.

Although on behalf of the police, Colonel Lázaro Aponte confiscated the twins' knives, in reality no one took the threats seriously, they did not believe that they would be able to assassinate the other young man. The twin brothers returned home to grab another two knives, sharpen them, and head to the bar for another drink.

Chapter 4

At this point in history "the much heralded murder" had already been committed. Brothers Peter and Paul are imprisoned. Santiago's autopsy goes wrong and his funeral is a disaster. We go a little deeper into the life of the narrator, he tells us how a few years later he met Ángela Vicario. We fast-forward in time to the moment when the narrator is telling the story.

Angela, since her abandonment, sent love letters to Bayardo that never had an answer. However, many years later, the man returned to the village and the spouses lived the rest of their lives together.

Chapter 5

To close the book, the narrator, who has always presented himself as one of Santiago's close friends, tells us that the judicial process of the murder continues. The supposed reason why Santiago had been assassinated (destroy the family's honor by having deflowered Angela) is false, it was actually another man who was guilty, who confesses it to our storyteller.

As a finale, we are told step by step the long-awaited assassination of Santiago Nasar.

If you want to read more articles similar to Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Summary, we recommend that you enter our category of Reading.

• Flórez, O. (2006). The social determinism of the individual in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Colombia: Santo Tomás de Aquino University.
• Garcia, G. (1981). A Chronicle of a Death Foretold.