Later Lar

Lara Evans
Ms. Wendel
Jr. IB Lit., 3
October 30th, 2014
Insert Clever Title Later Lar (u got dis)
In the story of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez takes the reader deep into the past of a small town, rocked by the murder of one of its residents, Santiago Nasar. The story is told twenty-seven years after the fact, as one man attempts to chronicle his memories and the other townspeople's memories of what transpired. The author uses the alteration of previously insignificant memories, as well as an extended metaphor of acting and card-playing, in order to show the mechanisms characters use to mitigate guilt, ultimately casting doubt on the objectivity of the first-person narrator.
Characters speak of themselves, or others,
When the chronicler’s mother reflects on the events surrounding the murder, she says she appreciates “the fact that [Angela] played out her marked cards to the final consequences”(46). In gambling, ‘marked cards’ are those in which a player has altered the appearance of a playing card in such a way that no other player is aware but himself. Only that person can know the way the hand will eventually play out. Much in the same way, Angela is the only one who knows that she is not a virgin, and thus is the only one who can see how the future will eventually end up. This extended metaphor all hinges on the fact that the chronicler’s mother compares the events of the novella to a card game. Much like a card game where each hand is a direct factor in the next, the mother perceives the sequence of events around the death as causally related. In this vein, Angela’s return on her wedding night caused the subsequent honor killing. Much like thinking of the events around the murder through the perspective of acting, thinking of it like a card game removes all free-will and decision-making power from those involved. Similarly, the narrator speaks of how, prior to the murder, it was not known “what cards Santiago Nasar was playing”(46) nor “what cards Bayardo San Roman was playing”(46). Yet again, characters compare each other to card players in order to relieve themselves of responsibility in Nasar’s death, because it creates the illusion that each character had a set hand of moves they could play, all inevitably leading to the same end. In retrospect, it is much easier to think of one’s past action like that, rather than confronting that each person could have drastically changed the course of events. Throughout the novella, characters frequently apply metaphors, like a card game, to their actions in order to relieve themselves of blame or guilt in Santiago Nasar’s