Chronicle of a Death Foretold

The violence portrayed in Chronicle of a Death Foretold escalates throughout the story, reflecting the central theme of Honor and Violence. In the opening chapter, the narrative cuts away from Santiago just as he is about to be killed. In the ensuing chapters, the knives are drawn and sharpened as the twins wait to strike. In Chapter 4, the narrative skips ahead to the period after the murder. Violence is more common—a group of dogs is killed when their barking becomes too intrusive and distracting.

The description of the “inclement autopsy” is also filled with violent, brutal imagery. The desecration of Santiago’s body is an additional, bloody insult to the senselessness of his death. An inexpert man fumbles around in a rotting corpse which has been on public display for slightly too long, reaching a conclusion which is neither legally binding nor narratively satisfying. The autopsy establishes how Santiago died but not why he died, a responsibility which falls on the magistrate and the narrator at a later point in time. Like the autopsy, however, the magistrate and the narrator find themselves fumbling around in a rotting pile of memories which are impossible to stitch together into something resembling a satisfying narrative.

While Santiago is killed in a brutal fashion and Angela is driven from the town in shame, the people of the town consider the true victim of these events to be the rich and powerful Bayardo. The townspeople’s sympathy toward Bayardo is grounded in social sexism. No one attempts to sympathize with Angela or understand her actions; instead, Bayardo’s word is accepted, and Angela is outcast. Likewise, the narrative is sympathetic toward Santiago despite his frequent affairs women who were not his fiancé. The accusation against Angela is enough to condemn her, while Santiago is regarded with compassion.

Bayardo, meanwhile, compels a woman to marry him using money and social pressure, even though she does not want to marry him. He buys Xius’s house, even though Xius does not want to sell. He abandons his wife at a moment’s notice after her affair, despite the societal double standards surrounding the men’s casual affairs. Then, he sinks into a drunken, emotional state and must be fetched by his wealthy family and carried back to his life of luxury. That “poor Bayardo” is considered the victim in these circumstances illustrates the sexist hypocrisy of the society.

The irony of the events described in the novelal is that only after Angela is rejected by Bayardo does she begin to love him. After he takes her back to her parents’ home; after she is beaten by her mother; after she is driven out of the town, she realizes that “hate and love are reciprocal passions” (94). Once she had “nothing in common with the person who’d been obliged to marry without love at the age of twenty” (90), she was free to love on her own terms. Angela was compelled to marry Bayardo because of social pressure. Her perceived value as a woman derived from the value placed on her sexual abstinence, and her family sought to trade this for material wealth. Her feelings and emotions were deemed irrelevant compared to what she could earn for the family. Once her affair became known and the perceived value compromised, Angela became free to love on her own terms. Now that her marriage is not an obligation, she is free to see Bayardo in an objective light. The obligation, the pressure, and the social demands are lifted from her. Only at the moment that society deems Angela to be valueless is she able to find true value and meaning in her life. Her letter-writing campaign lasts 17 years and, ultimately, is successful. Angela and Bayardo do eventually reunite but only after so much has been lost.