Cultural Coercion in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

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In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Garcia Marquez recounts the atmosphere and events of a town leading up to the murder of Santiago Nasar. While the Vicario brothers in particular murdered him, they weren’t the only ones guilty. The town and its central values were just as responsible for Nasar’s death, as these factors drove the events into action. In this novel, Garcia Marquez implements dramatic action, dialogue, as well as a unique structure to illustrate the core values of honor, religion and family in this Columbian town. These cultural pressures generate an unbearable weight upon the Vicario brothers to murder Santiago Nasar. The role of honor in this novel played an essential role in the death of Santiago Nasar. After the news broke loose that the twins’ sister, Angela Vicario, had lost her virginity before marriage, their family honor was lost as well. Premarital sex is frowned upon in their culture, to the point where it not only tainted the image of Angela Vicario, but her entire family as well. Garcia Marquez uses dramatic action to highlight this belief. When the news breaks loose that Angela had lost her virginity before marriage, her brothers and her mother beat her, trying to extort the name of her “perpetrator”. It was therefore up to the Vicario brothers to restore it, as the “boys were brought up to be men” (31) in their culture. This meant murdering Santiago Nasar, the man deemed responsible for her deflowering. It becomes clear, however, that the Vicario brothers wouldn’t have committed the crime if not for the cultural pressures imposed on them, as Garcia Marquez effectively uses dialogue to illustrate this. Clotilde Armenta, one of the townspeople, called it a “horrible duty that’s fallen on them.” (57) Prudencia Cortes, Pablo Vicario’s fiancé, said that she “never would have married him if he hadn’t done what a man should do” (37). The

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