Who Is Responsible For Santiago Nasar's Death

As the titular word “foretold” suggests, Santiago Nasar’s death initially appears to be a matter of predetermined fate. However, through a class discussion, it became evident fate was not the sole motivator of events. Its cousin, free will, is frequently observed in the actions of characters whose participation, or lack thereof, in events ultimately allowed the murder to take place. Chronicle is thus presenting a world of events where elements of both fate and free will are present, despite how we initially viewed them to be mutually exclusive forces. From the first page, the novel tells us Santiago was destined to die with a prophetic dream. However, this omen was misinterpreted by Placida Linero to be benign, in spite of the reader being
told she is usually an accurate interpreter of dreams. Therefore, a series of human coincidences begins. For example, Santiago made the rare decision to go through the door he never uses, but the murderous twins wait to kill him there. Some of the characters, like Victoria Guzman and Divina, enable his death by not informing him of the threat. Together, the supposed free wills of characters, like the choice of entrances or whether to say something, enables the events of the mystical dream to occur. Those of us in the discussion who were inclined to swat away the idea of fate became convinced through events like the dream that the supernatural phenomena exist in the novel can not be totally dismissed. Therefore, the free will of people is ironically critical for destiny to occur.
In Chronicle, Santiago appears to have the destiny to die prematurely.
During his autopsy, it was discovered that “he had only a few years left” (76) due to hepatitis, regardless of the murder. Regardless of anyone else, Santiago was always going to die in an atypical fashion in the fiction. However, the Vicario brothers choose to murder Santiago, as they feel compelled by the societal value of machismo to fulfill their “duty” of defending honor. Their belief in the shameful fate that awaits them if they don’t try to defend honor overrides their obvious hesitancy in committing the crime. Their actions, such as making sure virtually the entire town knew when and how they planned to kill Santiago, made it appear to many characters in the book that they wanted to be stopped. However, in the end, “most of those who could have done something to prevent the crime and did not consoled themselves with the pretext that affairs of honor are sacred monopolies” (97). Consequently, this demonstrates that people, who may have used free will to stop the crime from happening, use the idea of honor being a matter of fate to once again ironically prevent that supposed “fate” from occurring. In this case, fate is an excuse made real by people’s free will to believe in it. Accordingly, no matter any beliefs we readers possess, neither fate nor free will is paradoxically allowed to exist in the novel without the
other.