Chronicle Of A Death Foretold By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Power of a Community
The cultural values and standard of living within a community has a way of molding individuals and their ways of life to fit certain criteria. In his Novella, Chronicle of a Death
Foretold, author Gabriel Garcia Marquez demonstrates how the value of honor and machismo can be powerful and victimizing of individuals like the Vicario brothers. These set values can sometimes be powerful enough to manipulate one’s actions even if one knows that action to be morally wrong. By analyzing the actions of Pablo and Pedro Vicario, readers can see that it was not due to a personal vendetta but due to the community standards of machismo and honor that lead the brothers to carry out the murder of Santiago Nasar.
This is a catholic …show more content…
Whereas this society praises female purity and remaining a virgin until after marriage, men are free to go to brothels and have sex with women and do as they please. Because of this double standard for men and woman one can begin to get a sense of
Marquez’s ideas of the hypocrisy that surrounds the catholic religion and its fallowers.
Although this is a Catholic community, they seem to disregard the sixth commandment
“thou shalt not kill” and the ninth amendment “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”. It is evident that they disregard the sixth amendment because the Vicario brothers have murdered Santiago Nasar for the ‘honor of their family’ but the rest of the community, although they are shaken up greatly by this event, they do not consider the brothers actions as sinful. They understood that it was a matter of pride and honor that drove the boys to seek out
Nasar and that it was in “the twins’ simple nature [that they were] incapable of resisting an insult” (pg.100-101). Going against the ninth amendment “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”, Angela violates this commandment when her family discovers that she …show more content…
They repeatedly tell people who they pass by, “we are going to kill Santiago Nasar” (pg. 69), and that “they were going to cut Santiago Nasar’s guts out” (59). And it’s this continuous advertising that leads one to believe that they wished to be stopped or for someone to hold them back. There is also a moment where Pedro “agonized, drop by drop, trying to urinate under the tamarind trees” later saying that he “was in no condition to kill anybody” (pg.61). It’s at these moments that readers can see that the Vicario brothers were much less eager to carry out the duty that’s been fallen onto them as to find someone who would do them a favor in the end and stop them. Yet the brothers knew that to maintain their honor and status within their community they had to follow through with their plans and carry out their mission.
The Vicario twins were bound by honor to at least attempt to kill the man whom Angela claimed to have robbed her of her of her own honor and the honor of the family. If they had made no attempt they would have been seen as weak and unmanly. Pablo’s fiancée,
The cultural values and standard of living within a community has a way of molding individuals and their ways of life to fit certain criteria. In his Novella, Chronicle of a Death
Foretold, author Gabriel Garcia Marquez demonstrates how the value of honor and machismo can be powerful and victimizing of individuals like the Vicario brothers. These set values can sometimes be powerful enough to manipulate one’s actions even if one knows that action to be morally wrong. By analyzing the actions of Pablo and Pedro Vicario, readers can see that it was not due to a personal vendetta but due to the community standards of machismo and honor that lead the brothers to carry out the murder of Santiago Nasar.
This is a catholic …show more content…
Whereas this society praises female purity and remaining a virgin until after marriage, men are free to go to brothels and have sex with women and do as they please. Because of this double standard for men and woman one can begin to get a sense of
Marquez’s ideas of the hypocrisy that surrounds the catholic religion and its fallowers.
Although this is a Catholic community, they seem to disregard the sixth commandment
“thou shalt not kill” and the ninth amendment “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”. It is evident that they disregard the sixth amendment because the Vicario brothers have murdered Santiago Nasar for the ‘honor of their family’ but the rest of the community, although they are shaken up greatly by this event, they do not consider the brothers actions as sinful. They understood that it was a matter of pride and honor that drove the boys to seek out
Nasar and that it was in “the twins’ simple nature [that they were] incapable of resisting an insult” (pg.100-101). Going against the ninth amendment “thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor”, Angela violates this commandment when her family discovers that she …show more content…
They repeatedly tell people who they pass by, “we are going to kill Santiago Nasar” (pg. 69), and that “they were going to cut Santiago Nasar’s guts out” (59). And it’s this continuous advertising that leads one to believe that they wished to be stopped or for someone to hold them back. There is also a moment where Pedro “agonized, drop by drop, trying to urinate under the tamarind trees” later saying that he “was in no condition to kill anybody” (pg.61). It’s at these moments that readers can see that the Vicario brothers were much less eager to carry out the duty that’s been fallen onto them as to find someone who would do them a favor in the end and stop them. Yet the brothers knew that to maintain their honor and status within their community they had to follow through with their plans and carry out their mission.
The Vicario twins were bound by honor to at least attempt to kill the man whom Angela claimed to have robbed her of her of her own honor and the honor of the family. If they had made no attempt they would have been seen as weak and unmanly. Pablo’s fiancée,