Death Foretold
At the crux of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a love story. The story itself is quite simple but in reality is dominated by the elusiveness of love and filled with cultural customs, clashes, illusions, and ambivalence. The conception of love in the novel is bleak; Santiago’s parents marry out of convenience “without a single moment of happiness” (García Márquez 6), and her mother must “console herself for her solitude” (10-11). Indeed, the thin line between love and duty and love and matrimony becomes completely blurred. Considering the lack of love in the novel coupled with its superficiality and manipulation, love is negatively and pessimistically presented.
García Márquez’s choice to preface the novel with “the pursuit of love / is like falconry” (Preface), immediately establishes the connection between love and sport, with a winner and a loser, powerful and weak. This aspect is culturally related. Boys are brought up to be “men” while girls are brought up to be suitable for marriage. The fact that women must be virgins upon marriage whereas the men can engage in premarital sex immediately places women and men at different standings in society and in relationships. If fidelity has anything to do with love, then an entire generation of young men have already been corrupted to believe that flesh takes the place of love as a permanent entity. In addition, the marriages in the novel are not consummated out of love but because of accompanied benefits. The entire courting process reeks of familial agreements and the sharing of reputation, affluence, power, and honor. Love does not play a role at any point. Angela’s mother mentions, in fact, that “love can be learned too” (38). Already love fails be a human emotion; it becomes, rather, a lesson, much like the process of learning how to make artificial flowers and candy.
There is a conception in the novel of the perfect “package” of a woman as servile and sacrificial, but nowhere is love inserted into the
García Márquez’s choice to preface the novel with “the pursuit of love / is like falconry” (Preface), immediately establishes the connection between love and sport, with a winner and a loser, powerful and weak. This aspect is culturally related. Boys are brought up to be “men” while girls are brought up to be suitable for marriage. The fact that women must be virgins upon marriage whereas the men can engage in premarital sex immediately places women and men at different standings in society and in relationships. If fidelity has anything to do with love, then an entire generation of young men have already been corrupted to believe that flesh takes the place of love as a permanent entity. In addition, the marriages in the novel are not consummated out of love but because of accompanied benefits. The entire courting process reeks of familial agreements and the sharing of reputation, affluence, power, and honor. Love does not play a role at any point. Angela’s mother mentions, in fact, that “love can be learned too” (38). Already love fails be a human emotion; it becomes, rather, a lesson, much like the process of learning how to make artificial flowers and candy.
There is a conception in the novel of the perfect “package” of a woman as servile and sacrificial, but nowhere is love inserted into the