Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Gender Analysis

One of the major themes of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is gender roles. Although Marquez goes into more detail about the oppressive lives of women in his novel, the lives of the men are also filled with servitude. Men must obey the laws of machismo and dutifully preserve their families’ honor. The Vicario’s brothers murder of Santiago Nasar clearly exemplifies the cruel role that their society expects them to fill. Their motive as well as their reluctance to kill Nasar bears striking similarity to Hamlet. Hamlet is forced to kill his Uncle Claudius as revenge for the death of his father and for the honor of his mother, Gertrude. While the killings both seem like a noble act, Hamlet and the Vicario brothers’ actions reveal a much deeper truth about machismo and the strain it puts on these characters. The Vicario brothers’ killing of Nasar is to bring honor for a woman they love; their act is a desperate attempt to reclaim their family’s dignity, but more
After his evil uncle, Claudius, kills his father and marries his mother Gertrude, Hamlet decides to kill Claudius. Hamlet does not kill Claudius as swiftly as the Vicario brothers. Instead, he questions his own motive to take revenge on Claudius. While it is obvious that Hamlet should act, he feels conflicted. Although Hamlet’s ideas fluctuate, a large part of him wants to kill Claudius but he cannot bring himself to do it. He sees the value in a human life, even if Claudius is his enemy (very much like the Vicario brothers with Nasar). But in feeling this compassion, he feels even worse about not completely wanting to kill Claudius. This pressure to feel total anguish and revenge also stems from the expectations that society is putting on him. Hamlet is obligated by male standards to act justly and without mercy. The root self-deprecation that Hamlet feels and the obligation that the Vicario brothers have both stem from the same pressure: the pressure to uphold dignity as a