Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Tragedy and Fate
Gabriel García Márquez was a Colombian novelist who worked at various newspapers in the country. In 1967, he wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude. The years 1981-82 are important for his chronicle of public life, and he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. One of the issues highlighted is the tragic drama, the fatal destiny. In the novel, an atmosphere of tragedy prevails. Santiago Nasar is the one who bears the weight of the inevitable tragic fate, as foreshadowed in the title of the novel. This subject dates back to Greek tragedy. In classical tragedies, many characters are condemned to an inevitable end. The gods rule the destiny of men, and they can do nothing to change it. In the novel, we find a series of elements that are reminiscent of classical tragedy: there is a transgression that must be punished, the victim’s innocence, violence, and the barbaric slaughter of the chorus. However, there are no divine forces that rule the destiny. Instead, there is an accumulation of blunders, coincidences, contradictions, and circumstances leading to the death of Nasar.
The concrete forms that embody clumsiness are varied. The central contradiction is that the people know that the Vicario brothers are going to kill Nasar, with many finding out just before his death. The contradiction is presented with skill and credibility and creates a tragic atmosphere. The second major contradiction is that in a closed, puritanical society where everybody knows everything, Angela Vicario had lost her virginity to a young man of the people, and that fact is not known; it appears as inevitable destiny.
A sum of contradictions results from certain ambiguities. There are many facts that no one gets clear. The essential ambiguity focuses on who committed the crime of honor. Santiago was probably the victim of a false accusation and was killed for something he did not commit. There is also an accumulation of coincidences strung together, marking the fateful course of events. Santiago, who almost never went out the front door, did so that day, where the Vicario brothers were waiting for him. Luisa Santiaga sensed a tragedy, but that day she sensed nothing. The note slipped under the door, warning of the danger, was not seen by anyone until after the crime. Tamil Shaium did not find his gun cartridges, which would have prevented the murder.
These coincidences are blunders that cause the fatal human tragedy.
The blunders and misinterpretations dot the event and contribute to the tragic ending. Plácida Linero, who interpreted dreams, could not see any danger in her child’s dreams. The butchers did not take a shortcut to the Vicario brothers because they believed they were going to kill Santiago. Meme Santiago Lozano warned no one because she was so happy she thought everything was fixed. Santiago warned others not because they believed it was impossible not to know. Plácida Linero closed the front door thinking it was the Vicario brothers who wanted to enter. Cristo Bedoya, who could tell Hellenic, could not find him. One cannot say that there is a hyperbolic treatment of reality: an excessive accumulation of accidents, blunders… does not exceed the limits of the possible. Even the judge struggles to understand so many matches and tries to give them a rational explanation. It seems clear that the characters are helpless slaves of fate. However, one guesses a force that triumphs over fate: love. Angela, first owner of your destination, send love letters to the husband who abandoned her. This gesture of release: twist the target has been achieved in their favor.