Analyzing Textual Fitness and Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Posted on Nov 27, 2024 in Language

Fitness in Textual Analysis

Context and Issuer

  • Broader Context: Geographical, temporal, and social setting (academic, journalistic, etc.).
  • Issuer Identity: Cultural level, group affiliation, role (specialist, citizen).
  • Grammatical Presence: Use of first or third person, singular or plural.
  • Issuer-Receiver Relationship: Trust, distance, respect.

Modalization and Style

  • Sentence Types: Exclamatory, interrogative, use of verbal periphrasis.
  • Certainty Expressions: Probability, evaluative lexical items (hero, true).
  • Issuer’s Feelings: Regret, feelings expressed through adverbs and accessories.
  • Quantitative Expressions: Many, few.
  • Figurative Language: Irony, hyperbole, metaphors.

Textual Structure

  • Textual Polyphony: Multiple voices in the text.
  • Intertextuality: Texts within the text.

Receiver and Code

  • Receiver Identity: Specific or universal, social role, treatment formulas.
  • Code: Language varieties (geographical, social), non-verbal codes.

Inferences and Pragmatics

  • Encyclopedic Knowledge: Inferences, presuppositions, and implicatures.
  • Pragmatic Value: Meaning of specific statements or expressions.

Cohesion in Text

Maintaining Cohesion

  • Lexical Procedures: Repetition, synonyms, antonyms, derivatives, reformulations.
  • Grammatical Processes: Anaphora, cataphora, nominalization, deixis, tense correlation.

Connecting Ideas

  • Connectors: Addition, enhancement, completion, comparison, opposition, concession, restriction, exclusion, incident (cause, result, condition, purpose).
  • Textual Organizers


Marquez’s Doom: Fate in Chronicle

Fate in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

One of the key themes in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is fate. Santiago Nasar’s tragic destiny unfolds through an accumulation of errors and unusual circumstances, leading to an inevitable end. The novel shares elements with classical tragedies:

  • A violation to be punished.
  • Innocence of the victim.
  • Violence and barbaric slaughter.
  • Presence of a chorus-like element.

Numerous coincidences contribute to Santiago Nasar’s death. Examples include:

  • Placida Linero mistakenly locking her son out.
  • Cristo Bedoya’s inability to warn Santiago.
  • The lack of warnings from those who knew of the plot.
  • The mayor and vicar’s failure to intervene.

The novel presents a hyperbolic yet plausible reality, emphasizing the accumulation of coincidences. This recalls works like Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino by the Duke of Rivas, which also features a series of fatal accidents. Omens, premonitions, and superstitions, particularly those of Santiago Nasar’s mother, also play a role, yet most fail to prevent the tragedy.