The novel Chronicles of a Death Foretold, by Gabriel García Márquez, tells the story of a young man named Santiago Nasar who is brutally murdered by a pair of twins. The whole story turns around this murder, which happened because Angela Vicario told her husband Bayardo San Roman, on their wedding night that she wasn’t a virgin anymore because of Santiago.
I want to outline the importance of religion through certain events in the novel. The arrival of the Bishop, the fact that the twins immediately went to church after committing the crime and the importance of virginity with regards to religion. The significance of the church is greatly stressed in the novel, as it is an important part of many Latin American communities.
Religion in this novel seems to have a big role: however, it is a big role in a negative way. The town didn’t try to stop the murder because they focused on the arrival of the Bishop. It seems that they did a lot of preparations, trying to please the bishop, to free themselves from the sin that was about to happen later. The people’s superstition matches that of the bishop’s as he passes by without stopping, and this is shown in the line “it was a fleeting illusion: the bishop began to make a sign of the cross in the air opposite the crowd on the pier, and he kept doing it mechanically, without malice or inspiration, until the boat was out of sight.” There is no explanation for why the bishop dislikes the town, but if he does, as passing by reveals such indifference, such attitude goes against the Catholic doctrine of love and forgiveness. The Bishop made the cross sign mechanically which indicates that the religion is this town has become like an obligation. No one does it anymore because they wish to believe in Christ but rather they have been doing it their entire lives and it has become something natural to them.
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