CDF Blog

In this blog I am going to discuss my feelings toward some aspects of the book Chronicle of a Death Foretold.
First I would like to talk about how ignorant the culture portrayed in the book is. In this regard the one thing that stood out to me was the aspect of being a virgin before marriage. This does not pertain to everyone in the community and is very sexist because it only mandates girls in the community to not have sex. This topic is even bigger when examined more carefully because it is socially acceptable for the “pleasurable mulatto girls,” to have sex with the men and not be married. The men can be seen as pigs because they are so sexist and have relations with prostitutes on a regular basis. The men actually get accustomed to the prostitutes in Maria Alejandrina Cervantes' house at a relatively young age while the girls have to remain pure until their wedding. I personally do not like this aspect of their culture because it seems so foreign to the culture we are used to, but it is a good reality check because it reminds us that not everyone has the same viewpoints when the topic is being a virgin before marriage.

I also would like to talk about the Angela Vicario. In the book we are told that the “Vicario girls were brought up to be married.” If this is true I can only imagine why Angela was not a virgin on her wedding night. If she was raised in a fashion that was getting her ready for marriage, because marriage is important for women in that culture, then why would she not remain a virgin. To me it seems that she would not even consider having sex with anyone until her marriage, and this is why I am surprised that she had sex before her wedding night. The other thing I do not get is why she named Santiago Nasar and would not provide any explanation. The only thing I could think of is that she possibly had sex unwillingly, but it seems to me that in their culture she would have told her family and then her brothers would have gone and killed Nasar after they had intercourse. Marquez does not elaborate at all with this subject in the book and it is left for the reader to obtain his or her own assumptions as to what actually happened in Angela’s past.

One more aspect of the book was most of the people that knew about the threat to Santiago’s life did absolutely nothing to prevent it. On the contrary they went outside in the morning to witness it. The only reason so far I have come across as to why no-one did anything was because Santiago was rich and most of the townspeople were jealous of him. To me this argument is void because someone’s life is being threatened and no person is truly trying to help save Santiago’s life. The police don’t even do anything except take the brother’s first pair of knives away. Even after the murder the brothers only go to jail for a couple of years and then are released. Their justice system is definitely flawed when someone obviously committed murder, even if they did have a reason, and got away with it. The people of the town should have taken responsibility for helping their fellow citizen who did nothing serious to hurt the community. If he did truly take Angela’s virginity then an investigation should have taken place in which both parties are interviewed, but instead the brothers just go and kill Santiago. I do not believe this reason was sufficient enough to kill another person, and I think the people should have either stopped the brothers once they knew what was going to happen, or had everyone run to find Santiago to help him. Either way the community had some bitterness towards Santiago and I do not get why they would get pleasure from seeing another man die for a not so serious crime where no-one else was killed.
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