Santiago Nasar's Final Days Literary Analysis

The only remembrance of Santiago Nasar is through the recollections of the people who have known him. Due to the arguments and controversies over Santiago’s murder, Santiago is still discussed by the townspeople in order to piece together the truth. Even decades later, the townspeople are still arguing over Santiago and therefore they are still remembering who Santiago was. As long as he is remembered by others, Santiago still continues to be alive and immortal. The tale of Santiago Nasar’s final days is weaved together collectively by the memories of the townspeople. The narrator, a nameless protagonist, interviews the inhabitants of his hometown twenty-seven years later, in order to “put the broken mirror of memory back together from so
The perspectives illustrate the two types of memory, collective and individual, while the narrator becomes an accumulator of these memories. The composition of everyone’s memories allows for multiple versions of how the event occurred. Santiago is either demonized or glorified depending on the person’s own opinions of Santiago. Victoria Guzman, known notably for hating the Nasar bloodline, stated that “The sun warms things up earlier than in August” after Santiago’s death (García Márquez 9). The other townspeople, however, “agreed that the weather was funereal” (García Márquez 4), leading the reader to inquire which person was right. Even something as simple as the weather was highly disputed, leading the question of how much the novel itself can be taken factually. Even though there are differences in the facts of the story, this perverted story is still recounted to others, leaving only essence of Santiago to be told to others and to live on through these
The story is non-chronological and is told out of order, mimicking the way that memories are often not remembered sequentially. In addition, the story is told like clockwork, told repetitively through memories that essentially keep Santiago alive twenty-seven years after his death. Although most of the chapters end on an exclamation similar to “They’ve killed Santiago Nasar!” the story is reconstructed again, with a new memory or voice telling the story, adding more pieces to solve the puzzle of Santiago Nasar’s murder (García Márquez 71). Santiago’s murder is retold in each chapter, but Santiago becomes ‘resurrected’ in the next where his last moments are replayed, up until the last chapter of the novel. The last sentence of the novel ends with the line “He went into his house through the back door that had been open since six and fell on his face in the kitchen”, again ending Santiago’s life, but this time ending the loop of Santiago’s death and his following resurrection (García Márquez 120). The novel ends with no conclusion, paralleling the fact that Santiago’s murder has no conclusion or resolution. Santiago dies with his innocence still in question, but the circumstances of his death causes Santiago to still be remembered and, therefore, to still be