Research Paper On Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

Chronicle of a Death Foretold presents a unique circumstance in analyzing the reflection of culture in its characters, for the novel loosely reconstructs a real homicide that occurred in Columbia thirty years before the work was published. The novel’s author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, blends reality with fiction by rearranging the traditional concept of a chronicle via adapting factual events to a more elaborate and, ironically, nonlinear narrative. Through the basing of the story on real people from his country of origin, Marquez directly incorporates his Colombian culture into the novel (Pelayo 111). The greatest difficulty in examining this method of storytelling is determining where the line between reality and fictional alterations is drawn,
especially in regards to the story’s characters and the people they are based on. In spite of this, it is clear that the cultural values of both the real life people associated with the murder in 1951 and the author are embodied in Chronicle of a Death Foretold’s characters and expressed in their actions. The cultural values of Colombians displayed in Marquez’s novel are not just the norms of their society, but what they identify as morally right or wrong and what they perceive as bringing the most honor and respect. The most prominent Colombian principles conveyed through the characters in Chronicle of a Death Foretold are the maintaining of the honor of one’s family and the two closely related ideas of the submissive, oppressed female and the role of machismo in dictating the lives of men.