Imagery of Violence in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

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Jiří Juchelka IB1 English SL Imagery of violence in the novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold. As one of the main themes of this novel, Violence is seen and described throughout the whole story. In this particular novel the violence is portrayed very naturalistically and occasionally displayed in outrageous details. The imagery of violence in this novel is very important to the story. “But she couldn’t avoid a wave of fright as she remembered Santiago Nasar’s horror when she pulled out the insides of a rabbit by the roots and threw the steaming guts to the dogs.” (p.8) The author in this line expressed Victoria’s bitterness towards Santiago Nasar. The way he described the guts of the rabbit was very raw and cold and using the phrase “steaming guts” makes the reader embody in the situation. The description of Victoria Guzmán’s action is rather emotionless. The verb “throws” indicates that she acts in anger and has no sympathy for the rabbit. To this scene is very closely connected the main scene of this novel. Santiago Nasar’s death is described as a slaughter, possibly similar to the one of the rabbit. Only the fact that the Vicario brother’s had the chance let Santiago die decently and chose to use butcher knives instead shows us that they wanted Santiago to die like an animal for what he did. “Pedro Vicario pulled out his knife with his slaughterer’s iron wrist…” (p.119) The actual murder of Santiago Nasar is very descriptive. As a reader I see it as a bloody massacre and when I read the lines “Desperate, Pablo Vicario gave him a horizontal slash on the stomach and all his intestines exploded out.” (p.121) I get a bloody and detailed image of the damaged body and it makes me feel as if I was present in this scene. Another scene involving slaughter is the autopsy of Santiago’s body. The autopsy described as “a massacre” (p.75) was done very
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