Chronicle of a

Death Foretold
Study Guide by Course Hero

the story.
What's Inside
TENSE
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is told in the past tense.
j Book Basics ................................................................................................. 1
ABOUT THE TITLE
d In Context ..................................................................................................... 1 The title Chronicle of a Death Foretold states that the novella is
a chronicle, which narrates events in chronological order.
a Author Biography ..................................................................................... 3 However, the author uses the label chronicle with verbal irony
(when what is meant is different from what is said), because
h Characters .................................................................................................. 4
the events in the story are not revealed in chronological order.
k Plot Summary ............................................................................................. 8 Further, the title reveals that the story's death is foretold or
known in advance—and this death occurs at the very beginning
c Chapter Summaries .............................................................................. 14 of the novella. So this, too, undermines the real-life, journalistic
pretense of the author. In short, the title contrasts with the
g Quotes ........................................................................................................ 23
nonlinear and somewhat mysterious and inexplicable nature of
the events in the narrative.
l Symbols ...................................................................................................... 25

m Themes ...................................................................................................... 26

b Motifs .......................................................................................................... 28 d In Context

j Book Basics Surrealist Fiction

Surrealism is a type of art intended to defy rationality.
AUTHOR
According to Encyclopedia Britannica, surrealism aims to
Gabriel García Márquez
"renounce logic and realism and overturn social and cultural
YEAR PUBLISHED conventions of the time." With verbal irony (in which what is
1981 meant is different from what is said), the novella is called a
chronicle; it completely obfuscates the chronology during
GENRE which key events occur. The accumulation of strange
Fiction coincidences and the failure of memory also serve to make the
central incident in the story seem uncanny or beyond what
PERSPECTIVE AND NARRATOR
would normally be expected in the real world.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold is told from the perspective of an
unnamed narrator, allegedly the author, who pieces together a Chronicle of a Death Foretold is surrealist fiction insofar as the
journalistic narrative of a past event. The story as related by overwhelming number of accidents, misunderstandings,
the characters is told in the third person by the narrator, who misinterpretations, contradictions, and confused memories
also uses the first person to describe his own involvement in
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
seem to completely undermine reason and human
understanding regarding how events unfold in the real world.
The mind cannot make sense of how or why all these
interlocking mistakes and coincidences seem to conspire so
that, together, they make the death of the central character
seem inevitable, or foretold. As author Isabel Rodriguez-
Vergara points out, "The fragmentation of the stories of the
'other' participants is immediately apparent," and the
uncertainty and ambiguity of this fragmentation adds further to
the surreal quality of the narrative. Vergara also notes that "we
already know the events [of the story, so] we must conclude
that what is in question is the whole structure of the novel, not
the events" it describes. Critic Jeff Vandermeer suggests the
weight of surrealist fiction comes from its power to propose
uncanny everyday mysteries. He says, these narratives aren't
"quite what we expected, and in that space we discover some
of the most powerful evocations of what it means to be human
or inhuman." The fragmentary, ambiguous, contradictory, and
coincidentally fantastical structure of the novella places it
firmly in the category of surrealist fiction.
Journalism and Fiction
Journalism is ostensibly the objective reporting of
corroborated fact to reveal truth. Like the narrator in this
novella, journalists investigate events by interviewing witnesses
or those directly involved in the events. They may also
investigate by finding documentary evidence and records from
those who were there or who conducted previous
investigations. This activity appears in the novella when the
narrator searches for and finds the magistrate's documents
concerning the crime. Still, as critic Bryson Hull explains, "The
concept of perfect [journalistic] objectivity [is a] fiction." Part
of the power of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is created by the
tension of a journalist narrator trying to tease objective truth
out of a multitude of witnesses, all of whose testimony about
the crime creates only more exasperating confusion about
what really happened. The journalist who seeks truth is, with
situational irony (when what happens is the opposite of what is
expected to happen), juxtaposed with the impossibility of ever
finding it.
García Márquez worked as a journalist before the success of
his novels allowed him to write fiction full time. He has said that
Chronicle of a Death Foretold was "a perfect union between
journalism and literature. [In it] journalism and literature [are]
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In Context 2
almost joined. I have never been able to completely separate
them." Vergara writes, "We must conclude that in García
Márquez, journalism and fiction are blurred: he fictionalizes
'reality' and at the same time ... denies the possibility of a single
truth."
Avenging Dishonor, or Honor
Killings
Today, and in many times and places in the past, honor killing
generally entails the murder of a woman who has (or is thought
to have) transgressed social sexual norms. The transgression
does not require a physical sexual act. Depending on the
culture, it may be something as simple as walking alone in the
street, not covering a part of the body or face that the society
demands be hidden, or just talking to or looking at a
nonrelative male without the permission or oversight of a male
relative. As writer Ryan Brown explains, honor killings occur in
what are termed "honor cultures" in which "men are
encouraged to seek reputations for being tough and intolerant
of disrespect ... If someone insults your honor, you must
respond—typically in an aggressive or even violent manner—or
you risk incurring the stain of dishonor" for yourself and your
family.
In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, dishonor is avenged not on
the transgressive woman (Angela Vicario) but on the man
whom she says brought dishonor on her (Santiago). This male-
directed honor killing most likely arises from the medieval
European chivalric custom of men dueling to defend their and
their family's honor. In Latin America, honor killing is an
outgrowth of the culture of machismo, the male code of honor.
The violence associated with macho honor killing is most often
only between men, as in this novella. It is interesting to note
that although it is men who carry out vengeance for a female's
lost honor, the girl or woman in question is not powerless. One
author says, "Men are the only possible ... agents of honor ...
But women do have [the] power [to] destroy the honor of the
males [because it is they who can] bring dishonor on men. That
is, men put their honor in the hands of 'their' women."
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
History of Machismo
As in most of Latin America, honor is of vital importance within
Colombian culture, and it plays a major role in the novel's main
event, the murder of Santiago. Most historians agree that the
forerunner of machismo was the male-dominant culture of the
Spanish during their colonization of Latin America during the
15th and 16th centuries. Male honor was of huge importance to
the Spanish conquistadors and aristocrats who fought duels to
preserve their honor. Professor Hartmut Heep defines
machismo as "an elaborate system of masculine behaviors"
developed after the triumph of the Spanish Catholic
conquistadors, which left indigenous Latinos feeling inferior.
After the conquest, "the identity of the indigenous male shifted
effectively from biological maleness to socially defined [and
heightened] masculinity."
Catholicism also defines the role of women in Colombia as
portrayed in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, particularly in its
traditional emphasis on a woman's submissive role and the
virginity of a future bride. While the dominant males are
culturally required to adopt machismo, women are limited to
what Professor Heep terms Marianismo, which "exalts
femininity and childbearing capacity ... as well as the qualities
of obedience, submission, fidelity, meekness, and humility."
Latino macho males are accepted as being highly and proudly
sexual. Latinas are oppressed by the stifling requirements of
Marianismo, which is hostile to any sexuality outside marriage
(and often demands submission, rather than real sexuality,
within it).
a Author Biography
Early Life
Gabriel García Márquez was born on March 6, 1927, in
Aracataca, Colombia, and lived in his maternal grandparents'
house for eight years. Aracataca was a village "where
everybody knew everybody else." García Márquez's memories
inspired the setting and events of Chronicle of a Death
Foretold.
As an adult, García Márquez returned to the village with his
mother to sell his grandparents' house. On this trip, inspired by
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Author Biography 3
everything, nostalgia "caught [him] by surprise." García
Márquez describes returning to Aracataca as a major influence
on his literary life. Not only did he gain his mother's blessing for
his writing career during the trip, but he then, at age 22, viewed
the village as if "everything I saw had already been written,"
and his only task was to sit down and record it.
García Márquez modeled his characters after important people
in his life. It is likely that many of the characters in Chronicle of
a Death Foretold were modeled on people García Márquez
knew as a child. The event at the center of this novella actually
occurred.
Writing Career
A political advocate for the left wing, García Márquez started
writing stories for a local newspaper when La Violencia—a 10-
year violent political civil war between the liberal and
conservative parties in Colombia fought primarily in rural
areas—erupted. By the mid-1950s after penning political
criticism, García Márquez's journalism career exiled him from
Colombia to Paris and then to New York through the early
1960s. This geographical and psychological distance from the
conflicts of his homeland influenced his thinking about Latin
American politics. As a critic of elitism and imperialist
influences in Latin America, García Márquez saw his writing as
a means for creating "a Latin American identity" by drawing
attention to Latin American culture.
Journalism not only supported García Márquez before he
achieved literary fame, it also influenced his literary writing as
well. The style he uses in Chronicle of a Death Foretold is
journalistic, replete with interviews of people involved in a key
incident in the past. García Márquez describes the level of
detail that makes Chronicle of a Death Foretold successful as a
"journalistic trick," a technique that highlights the ambiguity
surrounding memory and truth.
In Chronicle of a Death Foretold the unnamed narrator, very
likely García Márquez, has the role of an investigative journalist
who is trying to understand a decades-old murder of a young
townsman. The book is based on an actual murder that
occurred in Sucré, Colombia, in 1951. In that case a friend of
García Márquez, Cayetano Gentile Chimento, was murdered "in
broad daylight by two brothers who knifed him to death in the
town's plaza." The brothers who killed him were avenging the
supposed lost honor of their sister, a town schoolteacher who
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
had been friends with Cayetano, although no physical
relationship is known to have occurred. In his autobiography
García Márquez wrote, "It seemed to me that the subject [of a
crime of passion] was eternal and I began to take statements
from witnesses." Although this novella is a fictionalized version
of this event, some incidents are true to life. For example, the
author states that "two of the teacher's brothers had pursued
Cayetano when he tried to take refuge in his house, but Dona
Julieta [his mother] had hurried to lock the street door
because she believed that her son was already in his bedroom.
And so he was the one who could not come in, and they
stabbed him to death against the locked door." This incident is
reconstructed in the novella.
Success and Legacy
Chronicle of a Death Foretold was written over a decade after
García Márquez's most famous novel, One Hundred Years of
Solitude (1967), which contains far more magical realism than
the more surrealistic Chronicle. Among his other famous and
lauded novels are Leaf Storm (1955), In Evil Hour (1962),
Autumn of the Patriarch (1975), Love in the Time of Cholera
(1985), and The General in His Labyrinth (1989).
In 1982 García Márquez won the Nobel Prize in Literature,
primarily on the strength of his 1967 narrative One Hundred
Years of Solitude, a novel regarded around the world as a
literary masterpiece and the best-known work of magical
realism. García Márquez continued to write, publishing pieces
in journalism, a memoir, and pieces in fiction, including
Chronicle of a Death Foretold. García Márquez died on April 17,
2014, after suffering from lymphatic cancer and dementia.
Months after his death, the University of Texas's Harry Ransom
Center purchased his archives. He is considered one of the
greatest literary minds of his time.
h Characters
Narrator
The narrator lived in the town as a boy, and his mother, sisters,
and brother still reside there. He returns to the town decades
after Santiago's murder to find out exactly what happened. He
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Characters 4
is now working as a journalist, and he uses his skills as an
interviewer and investigator to try to tease out the facts about
what happened at that fateful time and why.
Angela Vicario
Angela is a young, pretty girl of marriageable age whose family
keeps a close eye on her to protect her honor. However, inside
she's a free spirit who chafes at her family's overprotection.
After she lies about Santiago and the tragedy plays itself out,
she lives on her own, guided only by her free will and her love
for Bayardo. Angela never divulges with whom she had sex
with before her marriage.
Pablo Vicario
Pablo Vicario is the twin brother of Pedro and older brother to
Angela. He is a hog-butcher and a hot-headed macho Latino
male who is hell-bent on finding Santiago and avenging the
honor of his sister, Angela, who supposedly was violated by
Santiago before her marriage. It is Pablo who forces his twin,
Pedro, to pursue the murder of Santiago even after Pedro feels
events have satisfied his lust for revenge.
Pedro Vicario
Pedro Vicario is Pablo's twin brother and works with him as a
hog butcher. Pedro eventually becomes less intent than his
brother on finding and murdering Santiago. However, he lets
Pablo force him to help with the killing. He is far more affected
by the murder and afterward goes off to join the military, where
he disappears and is never heard from again.
Plácida Linero
Plácida is an upper-class woman who lives with her son and
servants in a large house on the town plaza. Despite the
intention of several townspeople to warn her of the threat to
her son, she never learns of the murder plot before it's carried
out. It is by chance that Plácida aids in the murder when she
bolts the front door as Santiago rushes toward it to escape the
Vicario brothers.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Characters 5

Santiago Nasar
Santiago is an open-hearted, good-natured, and innately
innocent young man. Angela Vicario names him—falsely—as
the man who violated her prior to her marriage. The macho
code of honor makes him the target of the vengeful Vicario
brothers, who seek him out to murder him. For inexplicable
reasons Santiago does not learn of the murderous twins' plan
until it is too late, and they hack him to pieces at his front door.

Bayardo San Román

Bayardo comes from a rich and high-status military family. He's
supremely self-confident and lavish in planning his wedding
celebration and in buying Angela the house of her dreams. His
confidence is crushed by the scandal surrounding Angela and
the termination of their marriage. He nearly dies from his
alcoholism. Decades later he is still bitter and closemouthed
about the terrible events that occurred during and after his
wedding to Angela.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Characters 6

Character Map

Santiago Nasar
Murders Handsome young townsman Murders

Mother

Bayardo San Román

Plácida Linero
Rich, handsome young man; Friends
Rich older woman
in town to find a wife
Tries to
interview

Narrator
Investigative journalist

Investigates

Investigates

Pablo Vicario Interviews Pedro Vicario

Vengeful hog butcher Vengeful hog butcher

Brother Brother

Angela Vicario
Pretty young townswoman

Twin brothers
New bride

Main Character

Other Major Character

Minor Character

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Characters 7

Full Character List Bishop

The bishop is the chief shepherd of
the town who visits the town only
by boat.
Character Description
Pollo Carrillo is the owner of the
Pollo Carrillo
town electric plant.
The narrator is a former town
Narrator resident and currently an
investigative journalist. María Alejandrina Cervantes is an
María Alejandrina
eccentric resident of the town and
Cervantes
owner of a brothel.
Angela Vicario is a young woman of
Angela Vicario
marriageable age.
Escolástica Cisneros is a town
Escolástica resident who thinks she saw
Pablo Vicario, a young man, is
Pablo Vicario Cisneros Santiago with Cristo in the town
Angela's brother.
square.

Pedro Vicario is Pablo's twin and

Pedro Vicario Prudencia Cotes is a town resident
Angela's brother. Prudencia Cotes
who later marries Pablo Vicario.

Plácida Linero Plácida Linero is Santiago's mother.

Celeste Dangond is a town resident
Celeste Dangond who invites Santiago in for coffee
Santiago Nasar is a young, open- before Santiago is murdered.
Santiago Nasar
hearted man of the town.
Divina Flor is the daughter of
Bayardo San Román is a rich and Divina Flor Victoria Guzmán, who also works
Bayardo San and cooks for the Nasars.
handsome young man in town
Román
looking for a wife.
Don Rogelio de la Don Rogelio de la Flor is Clotilde
Susana Abdala is the matriarch of Flor Armenta's husband.
Susana Abdala the Nasar family and an herbalist
healer.
Victoria Guzmán is the Nasars'
Victoria Guzmán
maid and housekeeper.
Father Carmen Amador is the town
Father Carmen
priest. He is also forced to conduct
Amador Doctor Dionisio Doctor Dionisio Iguarán is the town
an autopsy on Santiago's body.
Iguarán physician.

Don Lázaro Don Lázaro Aponte is the town

Jaime is the narrator's younger
Aponte mayor. Jaime
brother.

Próspera Arango is the daughter of

Argénida Lanao is the Nasars'
Próspera Arango a man who's fallen ill and whom Argénida Lanao
oldest daughter.
Cristo stops to help.

Poncho Lanao is a nearby neighbor

Clotilde Armenta is the owner of Poncho Lanao
Clotilde Armenta of the Nasars.
the town milk shop.

The lawyer defends the Vicario

Hortensia Baute is a resident of the Lawyer
Hortensia Baute brothers at their trial.
town.

Plácida Linero is Santiago Nasar's

Cristo Bedoya is a friend of the Plácida Linero
Cristo Bedoya mother.
narrator and Santiago.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Plot Summary 8

Meme Loiza is a citizen of the town Yamil Shaium is the owner of a dry
Meme Loiza
who saw Santiago with Cristo. Yamil Shaium goods store who tries to warn
Santiago.

Fausta López is the wife of Polo

Fausta López
Carrillo. Alberta Simonds is Bayardo's
Alberta Simonds
mother.

Luis Enrique is the narrator's

Luis Enrique
brother. Poncio Vicario Poncio Vicario is Angela's father.

The magistrate is a young Pura Vicario, also called Púrisima

Magistrate investigator sent to hear the case Pura Vicario del Carmen, is Angela Vicario's
against the Vicario twins. mother.

Margot Margot is the narrator's sister. Xius is the owner of the house that
Xius Bayardo buys for himself and his
wife.
Wenefrida Márquez is the narrator's
Wenefrida
aunt. She speaks to Santiago just
Márquez
before he dies. Yolanda Xius is Xius's deceased
Yolanda Xius
wife.

Mercedes becomes the narrator's

Mercedes
wife.

Flora Miguel Flora Miguel is Santiago's fiancée. k Plot Summary

Nahir Miguel is the father of
Nahir Miguel
Santiago's fiancée, Flora Miguel.
Chapter 1
Ibrahim Nasar Ibrahim Nasar is Santiago's father.
Santiago Nasar has been murdered. He'd gotten up early to go
and see the bishop who was arriving on a boat that morning.
Sara Noriega owns a shoe store in
Sara Noriega The day before there had been a large and lavish public
town.
wedding celebration in honor of the marriage of Angela Vicario
to Bayardo San Román. Unbeknownst to Santiago, Bayardo
The nun The nun is the narrator's sister.
had dragged his wife back to her parents' home the night
before because he discovered she was not a virgin. When her
Indalecio Pardo is a town resident
Indalecio Pardo who learns of the coming murder of twin brothers demanded to know who had deflowered her,
Santiago. Angela said it was Santiago. Her brothers Pedro Vicario and
Pablo Vicario swear to murder Santiago as revenge for
General Petronio General Petronio San Román is dishonoring their sister.
San Román Bayardo's father.
The narrator, who grew up in this town, has returned 27 years
Leandro Pornoy is a town later as a professional investigative journalist to uncover the
Leandro Pornoy
policeman. truth about why and how Santiago was murdered.
Unfortunately, most townspeople have confused memories of
Luisa Santiaga is the narrator's what happened. Still, the narrator is determined to unearth the
Luisa Santiaga
mother.
reason that although most of the people in the town knew of
the Vicario brothers' plot to murder Santiago, no one warned
Faustino Santos is another butcher him or did anything to stop the killing.
Faustino Santos
in town.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
Chapter 2
Bayardo is handsome and rich. He arrived in town in August to
look for a bride. The moment he sees Angela Vicario walking
with her mother, he falls in love with her. The couple gets
married in February. Bayardo's wedding feast is the most lavish
and expensive the town has ever seen.
Angela does not want to marry Bayardo because she does not
love him, but because she had a strict upbringing, she must do
what her parents tell her to do—and they want her to marry
Bayardo. When Bayardo brings her home after discovering her
dishonor, Angela's mother beats her. When the townspeople
find out about her dishonor, they're amazed. Angela has always
been closely controlled by her mother. How had she found a
way to have sex with a man before her wedding?
The narrator, his brother, his friend, and Santiago spend the
entire night of the celebration together. Santiago is delightful
and carefree. The narrator is certain it could not have been
Santiago who had sex with Angela. She must have lied when
she named him.
Chapter 3
The Vicario brothers, who are twins, must avenge the lost
honor of their sister. They go to the pig butchery where they
work and get two long slaughtering knives. They go to the
meat market to sharpen their knives, and they boast to all the
butchers there that they're going to kill Santiago Nasar. Then
they go hunting for him. They roam the town looking for
Santiago, and along the way, they tell everyone they meet
about the murder they are about to commit. No one in town
takes them seriously, so no one bothers to warn Santiago, his
mother, or anyone else who might prevent the crime. People
think the twins are either too drunk to be taken seriously or
that they're just bluffing.
While the Vicario twins hunt Santiago, he, the narrator, his
brother, and his friend go up to the newlyweds' house to
serenade the couple. They are unaware that Bayardo is alone
in the house, having already returned his bride to her family.
The Vicario twins finally wait for Santiago to return home. They
sit in the milk shop, which is across the street from Santiago's
house, and plan to attack Santiago when he returns. They tell
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Plot Summary 9
each person who comes into the milk shop of their murderous
plan. Again, no one takes them seriously or does anything to
prevent it. The owner of the shop tells a beggar woman to go
to warn Santiago's mother, but it's not known if she gets the
message.
Chapter 4
The Vicario brothers have killed Santiago Nasar with their
butcher knives, nearly hacking him to pieces. He dies in front of
his home. The mayor orders the town priest to conduct an
immediate autopsy, as the body reeks in the heat. The botched
autopsy leaves Santiago's body even more mutilated. The
priest concludes that Santiago died of seven fatal stab
wounds.
The Vicario brothers turn themselves in to the church. They
show no remorse because they feel an honor killing is not a sin.
The priest, like most other men in town, seems to agree.
Because of an unwarranted fear of reprisal by the town's Arab
community, however, the Vicario brothers are moved to a jail
some distance away. Angela Vicario, her mother, and the rest
of her family also move out of town, fearful (needlessly) of
Arab revenge.
Decades later when the journalist narrator comes to
investigate the crime, he tries to interview Bayardo, who
refuses to discuss the incident. The narrator locates Angela
Vicario living on her own in a distant town, and she agrees to
speak with him. She discusses many details of the event but
will not say who had sex with her before her wedding day. She
tells the narrator that, since the incident so many years earlier,
she has fallen in love with Bayardo. She has written him
frequent letters for many years, even though he never answers
her.
Chapter 5
The people of the town are obsessed by the murder that took
place so many years ago. They want to understand how and
why it happened—why no one warned Santiago—but they can
make no sense out of the senseless accidents and wrong
choices that failed to save him.
A few weeks after the murder, a magistrate shows up in town
to investigate. He, too, is bewildered by what happened. He
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Plot Summary 10

cannot understand how everyone in town knew the murder

was about to take place but no one warned Santiago or did
anything to stop the crime.

The narrator goes on to describe the mischances,

misunderstandings, miscommunications, unlucky choices,
coincidences, and accidents that seem to have made a whole
host of townspeople unable or unwilling to warn Santiago to
save him. Perhaps they could not believe he would really be
murdered, but it is his fate to be murdered. His fate is foretold
when Angela names him and in the inaction of those who know
about the killing but do nothing. Santiago meets his fate at his
front door where the Vicario brothers butcher him.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Plot Summary 11

Plot Diagram

Climax

7
Falling Action
6
Rising Action
5 8

4
9
3
Resolution
2
1

Introduction

Introduction Climax

1. Bayardo San Román meets and marries Angela Vicario. 7. The Vicario twins butcher Santiago at his front door.

Rising Action Falling Action

2. Bayardo returns her to her home because she's not a virgin. 8. No one in town can explain why Santiago was not warned.

3. Angela confesses that she lost her honor with Santiago

Nasar.
Resolution
4. Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario get knives to kill Santiago.

5. Coincidences prevent Santiago from hearing about their 9. Angela refuses to divulge with whom she lost her virginity.
plan.

6. Santiago's mother bars the front door to her house.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Plot Summary 12

Timeline of Events

August

Bayardo San Román arrives in town.

October

Bayardo meets Angela Vicario.

February

Bayardo marries Angela in a lavish ceremony.

Monday evening

Bayardo and Angela leave the party for their new house.

Monday night, after 11

Bayardo returns Angela to her mother's house after he

discovers she is not a virgin.

Around midnight

The wedding celebration begins to break up.

Tuesday, about 4 a.m.

Santiago Nasar, Cristo Bedoya, and the narrator

serenade the newlyweds at their new house.

About 4:15 a.m.

Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario await Santiago in

Clotilde Armenta's milk shop.

About 4:20 a.m.

Santiago returns home and rests.

At 5:30 a.m.

Santiago dresses to go see the bishop.

6:05 a.m.

Santiago leaves his house to see the bishop.

About 6:45 a.m.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Plot Summary 13

Santiago visits his fiancée's house, but she forces him to

leave.

A few minutes later

Cristo Bedoya goes to Santiago's house to look for him,

but he's not there.

About 7 a.m.

Santiago is murdered at his front door by the Vicario

brothers.

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
c Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1
Summary
On the day he's murdered, Santiago Nasar gets up early,
dresses in crisp, clean white clothes, and goes out to see the
bishop, who will be stopping at the small, out-of-the-way town
in which he and the other characters in the book live. Santiago
is a "merry and peaceful ... and openhearted" young man of 21.
Although he's of Arabic descent, he seems to be a Christian
because he is so enthusiastic about seeing the bishop, even
though Santiago's mother, Plácida Linero, states that the
bishop "hates this town." Divina Flor, the daughter of the
Nasars' cook, Victoria Guzmán, is "disemboweling the rabbits"
when Santiago comes into the kitchen, and he's upset at the
carnage. There had been a wedding celebration the night
before, which Santiago had celebrated in the company of the
narrator, but Santiago is still up and out of the house by 5:30
a.m. Curiously, Santiago does not leave the house via the most
often used back door but goes out through the front door,
which is almost always barred from the inside. He rushes to the
dock by the stinking river, which had once been the lifeblood of
the town, to wait for the bishop.
The narrator is a journalist who returns to his home town to try
to figure out what happened when Santiago was murdered 27
years earlier. He questions Victoria Guzmán, but she says that
neither she nor Divina knew that two men were waiting to kill
Santiago. That is why she didn't warn him, though Divina says
her mother actually wanted the men to kill Santiago. However,
some unidentified person had shoved a warning letter under
the door of the Santiago residence. Alas, no one noticed the
written warning until it was too late.
On the day of the murder the two killers, Pedro Vicario and
Pablo Vicario, are waiting for Santiago in a milk shop across
the street. The shop has a view of the Nasar house's back
door, where the twins assume they'll see Santiago leaving. The
two murderers have been waiting since the end of the wedding
party in the wee hours of the morning, and each sleeps with a
butcher knife clutched to his chest. The killers are brothers
who will commit the murder to avenge the honor of their sister,
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Chapter Summaries 14
Angela Vicario. She has told them she had sex with Santiago
and has thus been dishonored. Like almost everyone in town,
the brothers are drunk from the previous night's revels.
The bishop arrives by boat but refrains from stepping off it and
onto town land. He "make[s] the sign of the cross ...
mechanically" from the boat and then departs. Santiago feels
cheated but quickly regains his sunny mood. The narrator's
sister, Margot, is with Santiago at the dock, and she invites him
to come to her house for breakfast. Santiago agrees but says
first he must change his clothes, so he hurries home, telling her
he'll be there in 15 minutes. The narrator states that "many of
those who were on the docks knew that [the brothers] were
going to kill Santiago." The mayor, Don Lázaro Aponte, insists
he didn't think Santiago was in any danger. The town priest,
Father Carmen Amador, feels the same way. The narrator is
surprised further when his mother tells him she didn't even
know about the planned murder, even though she always
seems to know everything that's going on in town. When she
learns about the plot, she goes straight to her friend Plácida to
warn her that her son is in danger. On the way to Plácida
Linero's house, a man stops her in the street to tell her not to
bother going because "they've already killed him."
Analysis
The novella opens with a quote from Portuguese playwright Gil
Vicente (c. 1465–c. 1537): "the pursuit of love is like falconry."
Here, finding love is represented as a form of predation in
which the raptor, or the seeker of love, snares a love object
almost at random and then kills it. Finding love is likened to a
blood sport in which the beloved is a victim of inevitable
violence. The quote sets the stage for the fury and violence
that love engenders in the novella. It is also likely a critique of
the cultural norm of vengeance killing, a custom that must be
taught to the men who carry it out, perhaps in the same way
captive falcons are trained to hunt on the wing.
Santiago's dreams contain the symbols of trees and birds. The
trees in his dream make Santiago feel happy, but when he
awakes, he feels as if he's "completely spattered with bird shit."
The birds he senses upon awakening, which may have been in
his dream, dispel his happiness and may therefore be omens of
evil to come. Later his mother tells the narrator she believes
that "any dream about birds means good health," a good rather
than an evil omen. In an earlier dream of trees, Santiago was
flying through a woodland "without bumping into anything."
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
This image of flying through trees may represent Santiago's
sense of freedom, but it also may foreshadow his future as a
potential victim of a hunting falcon (murderers). Neither
Santiago nor his mother recognizes the symbol of trees as an
omen or portent of Santiago's fate.
The narrator expresses his frustration, all these years later, at
"trying to put the broken mirror of memory back together from
so many scattered shards." The fickleness of memory arises
when the townspeople cannot even agree on the state of the
weather on the day Santiago was murdered. This is the first of
innumerable contradictions arising from witnesses' faulty
memories.
Both chance and choice seal Santiago's fate. Had the bishop
not, by chance, visited the town on this particular day, Santiago
would have been dressed for ranch work, and he would have
carried a gun. Critic Isabel Rodriguez Vergara underscores that
"the bishop's visit thus changes not only the order of things in
the town, but also Santiago's routine, which makes his murder
possible." As it is, Santiago chooses to wear special attire and
to go unarmed to greet the bishop. Crucially, it is by chance
that no one in the Santiago household notices the warning
note that had been pushed under their door. This accidental
oversight further ensures that the "foretold" murder will take
place. Others also make fatal choices. Victoria Guzmán hears
of the Vicario twins' murderous plan, but she chooses not to
"warn him because [she] thought it was drunkards' talk." Her
choice, based on an unfounded assumption, costs Santiago his
life. Santiago's own choice seals his fate when he decides to
go home to change his clothes rather than follow Margot to
her house for breakfast.
Both Victoria Guzmán and Divina Flor are complicit in the
murder. They know it will happen but don't take the warning
seriously enough to do anything about it. Clotilde Armenta, too,
is complicit in the killing. The Vicario brothers wait for Santiago
in her milk shop, but instead of firmly stopping them from
carrying out vengeance, she simply asks them to "leave him for
later" after the bishop has gone. It's stated that everyone "on
the docks knew that they were going to kill Santiago." Still, not
one of them does anything to prevent the murder. For this
reason, nearly the entire populace of the town is complicit in
the horrific crime. When the mayor is later interviewed by the
narrator, he says he "believe[d] [Santiago] wasn't in any
danger," a belief not based on fact. The priest, Father Amador,
also isn't worried, thinking the talk of murder "had all been a
fib." Even the narrator's mother, who supposedly has
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Chapter Summaries 15
supernatural "powers of divination," says she was unaware of
the danger Santiago was in. She may not be complicit in the
murder because when she does hear of it, she immediately
goes to warn Santiago's mother. As chance would have it,
however, Santiago is already dead.
The servants at Santiago's house introduce the theme of
violence as they sit in the kitchen "disemboweling the rabbits."
Santiago is sickened by the violence implied in the
dismembering of innocent animals. The violence of butchery is
associated with Santiago's murder when Victoria Guzmán
brandishes before him the bloody butcher knife used to
slaughter the rabbits. The knife foreshadows the butcher
knives the Vicario brothers will use later to slaughter Santiago.
That the Vicario brothers are universally viewed as "good
sorts" emphasizes how customary or routine honor killing is in
their culture. They are described as ordinary, nice men, but it is
a cultural custom that even nice men are expected to carry out
vengeance when a female relative is believed to have been
violated. Honor killing is customary and normal. Thus when
Bayardo San Román returns his bride to her home because
she's not a virgin, there seems to be no question that her
brothers will avenge her honor with murder.
Gender roles are revealed in Santiago's words to Divina Flor,
which make clear men's notion that women are theirs to tame.
Divina Flor even accuses Santiago of molesting her but relates
these experiences resignedly or as if it's his right. Victoria
Guzmán's youthful experience of being forced to become
Ibrahim Nasar's mistress reinforces the power of men and the
powerlessness of women in this culture, yet she accepts her
gender role as her fate.
Santiago's mother reveals what the bishop represents to the
town and his contempt for it. She says, "He'll give an obligatory
blessing [but] he hates this town." She discerns the bishop's
feelings correctly as he blesses the town "mechanically" and
never leaves the boat. The implication is he thinks the town
sinful and beyond redemption and will not sully himself through
contact with it or its inhabitants. The subsequent murder
seems to justify his judgment.
Chapter 2
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
Summary
Bayardo San Román has returned his bride, Angela Vicario, to
her parent's house. He had arrived in town in August, looking
for a bride. Bayardo is rich, handsome, and charming. He fixed
on Angela Vicario the moment he saw her in the street walking
with her mother. The narrator's mother thought Bayardo was
"a very strange man," and some residents believed he was the
devil. In contrast, others thought of him as a man "honest and
[with] a good heart." Bayardo finally meets Angela in October
at a charity bazaar. Bayardo sends Angela a music box as a
gift, but her brothers, suspecting untoward behavior, rush to
return the present. Yet once they meet Bayardo they are
charmed by him, and they bring the music box back to their
sister. Everyone agrees that Angela has been well and strictly
brought up, so she would make a perfect wife for Bayardo.
Bayardo is so intent on the marriage that he brings his entire
family to meet with, and get the approval of, Angela's parents
and family. Because Bayardo's father was a renowned military
general, the Vicarios are delighted with the match.
Angela has her doubts about marrying Bayardo, but her mother
refuses to listen to them. Instead of having the usual long
engagement, Bayardo and Angela are engaged for only four
months. When Bayardo asks Angela about her dream home,
she says it's the hilltop house owned by the old man, Xius.
Although Xius is at first adamant that he would not sell his
lifelong home, Bayardo makes him an offer of money he cannot
refuse. Angela will have her dream house.
It never occurs to anyone that Angela Vicario isn't a virgin.
She'd never had a fiancé, and "she'd grown up ... under the
rigor of a mother of iron." Even after the engagement she's not
allowed to go out unchaperoned with Bayardo. Only once did
the "blind father" accompany Angela and Bayardo out to see
the house he'd bought for her. It's unclear if anything happened
between them, but afterward Angela sought out her friends'
advice about lost virginity. They assure her that a childhood
accident could cause such a loss and, anyway, a nonvirgin
bride could easily find a way to stain a bedsheet with a drop of
blood to dupe her new husband.
Meanwhile, Bayardo is planning the grandest and costliest
wedding celebration for the town's citizens. All the while
Angela is getting beautiful and expensive wedding presents.
Bayardo enlarges the Vicario house to accommodate them and
to make room for revelers at his wedding party. He is "the
perfect image of a happy bridegroom." As for Santiago Nasar,
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Chapter Summaries 16
the narrator and his friends are with Santiago during the entire
celebration. Santiago loves parties but does nothing untoward
during the festivities. However, everyone at the celebration
gets totally drunk, so memories of what really happened are
fuzzy, at best. Finally, Bayardo "carrie[s] his terrified wife" to
their dream house.
While the festivities continued in the streets, Bayardo shows
up at the Vicario home and shoves his disheveled and half-
naked wife through the door. He thanks Pura Vicario and then
leaves. Pura Vicario, Angela's mother, is beside herself and can
scarcely remember what happens in the next few hours.
However, she does recall beating Angela mercilessly. When the
twin brothers Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario arrive home at
three in the morning and see the situation, they demand that
Angela tell them who dishonored her. She instantly names
Santiago.
Analysis
The touchy issue of female honor is introduced when Bayardo
gives Angela the music box. As soon as she shows it to her
family, her brothers immediately assume that Angela had
"given Bayardo [a] reason to send her a gift like that." They
suspect her of illicit physical or sexual contact with him. That
they rush off to return the gift to restore Angela's supposedly
compromised honor reveals the power a woman's lost honor
has on men in this culture. A bit later in the text this attitude is
emphasized: "the brothers were brought up to be men,"
confirming that such actions are expected of them.
At the same place in the text the statement that "girls had
been reared to get married" underscores the rigid gender roles
of that society. Angela Vicario states that she didn't love
Bayardo and that "he seemed too much of a man for me."
Because of his and his family's high social status, however, her
mother ignores Angela's reluctance to marry him. Young
women marry the man their family tells them to marry. Bayardo
wants to marry Angela because he falls in love with her, but
women are denied that privilege. For women love has nothing
to do with marriage. However, in this culture female virginity
has everything to do with marriage. Angela is schooled in tricks
women can use to create a "stain of honor" that fools their
husbands into believing they're virgins when they're not. Male
chastity is never an issue in a marriage.
Gender and honor are interrelated when it's stated that "no
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
one would have thought ... Angela Vicario wasn't a virgin"
because she was so strictly brought up. However, it's unclear if
the "blind father" fails to notice sexual improprieties when
Angela is out with Bayardo. The question still remains that if
Bayardo was the man who deflowered Angela, why would he
have returned her to her family because she's not a virgin?
The violence of the Vicario brothers is revealed in their
occupation as hog butchers. The objects in their abattoir—a
sacrificial stone and a disemboweling table—foreshadow the
bloody sacrifice of Santiago and the brutality of his murder.
The victim of their violence is accompanied throughout the
celebrations by the narrator, his brother, and his friend Cristo.
Thus Santiago is identified as an innocent, as a sacrificial
offering.
Pura Vicario, Angela's mother, reacts with violence when
Bayardo returns her daughter. Angela remembers only that her
mother beat her for two hours. The beating was so violent
Angela says, "I though she was going to kill me."
The confusions of memory are exaggerated by the
drunkenness of those at the wedding party. For the narrator,
everything about the party is confused, which is why he
"decided to rescue [events] piece by piece from the memory of
others." Unfortunately, most other attendees got equally as
inebriated and so have similarly fuzzy memories. The multitude
of voices and points of view still add depth and breadth to the
description of events leading up to the murder.
The lavish wedding celebration is festooned with countless
flowers, and Santiago calculates their cost at equaling the
flowers at 14 funerals. Flowers thus symbolize death. Santiago
even tells the narrator that "the smell of closed-in flowers had
an immediate relation to death" for him. At this time and place
such a statement is prophetic.
Angela's naming Santiago as the man who has violated her
encompasses the themes of fate and choice and references
the symbol of falconry. It is understood throughout the book
that Santiago did not interfere with Angela, yet she chooses to
name him as soon as her brothers demand to know who
molested her. Her accusation seals Santiago's fate and
ensures his brutal death even though Angela's accusation,
which comes to be seen as false, seems to be plucked out of
thin air—as a falcon snares its prey randomly among other
flying birds. At no point in the novella does Angela reveal the
truth about who her actual lover was or why she names the
innocent Santiago; she is the agent of Santiago's terrible fate,
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Chapter Summaries 17
nailing him "to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly
with no will whose sentence has always been written." This
description foreshadows how and where Santiago will be
killed. It underlines his powerlessness in altering his fate, which
is foretold.
Chapter 3
Summary
When much later Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario stand trial for
murder, the judge acquits them on the grounds that their
action was a "legitimate defense of honor." They had
surrendered with great dignity to the church "a few minutes
after the crime" was committed. They had told Father Carmen
Amador that they were innocent before God and men because
it was a matter of honor. In jail awaiting trial, the brothers were
well behaved but showed no remorse.
On the night before the murder the brothers look for Santiago
Nasar after getting two slaughtering knives and sharpening
them at the meat market. They tell the butchers there that they
intend to kill Santiago. One butcher then informs a policeman,
Leandro Pornoy, of the brothers' evil intent. When Pornoy later
meets the Vicario brothers at the milk shop, they seem to tell
him of their plan, but the policeman doesn't take them
seriously. Neither, at first, does the mayor, Don Lázaro Aponte.
Eventually he realizes this might be a grave situation, so he
goes to see the Vicario brothers at the milk shop. Upon
meeting them he thinks the brothers are "nothing but a pair of
big bluffers," but he takes away their knives just in case. Then
he forgets about the whole thing until he later sees Santiago
on the dock waiting for the bishop.
The Vicario brothers describe their plan to at least a dozen
people, and soon the whole town knows about it. Still, no one
warns Santiago. Clotilde Armenta sends a beggar woman to
the Santiago house to warn Santiago's mother about what is
afoot. Meanwhile the Vicario brothers return home to get two
new knives. They sharpen these knives, too. As time passes,
however, Pedro Vicario decides he does not want to kill
Santiago. When the mayor took their knives earlier, Pedro
considered "his duty [of honor] fulfilled." The two brothers
argue because Pablo is still determined to murder Santiago.
Pablo prevails and practically drags Pedro away to look for
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
their victim. They stop at Pablo's fiancée's house for coffee
and then resume their hunt.
Earlier, around four o'clock in the morning, Santiago, the
narrator, and their friends go up to the newlywed's house to
serenade them under their window. The house seems
deserted, but Bayardo's car is parked by the front door. They
have no idea Bayardo has already returned his new bride to
her parents. After the serenading, the friends go to eat, but
Santiago says he will instead go home to rest. As he gets into
bed, his mother gets the beggar woman's message. It's not
mentioned if she warned her son.
Before the above incidents occur, the narrator's brother, Luis
Enrique, stops at the milk shop. The Vicario brothers tell him of
their murderous plan. Luis does not believe them even when
they ask if he knows where Santiago is. As Luis leaves, Father
Carmen Amador walks by. The priest had received Clotilde
Armenta's earlier warning message but admits—years
later—that he "didn't know what to do ... it wasn't any business
of mine." After the murder he feels despair at his failure to take
action. The bishop arrives at the town on a boat. At the
narrator's house, his sister, a nun, announces, "They've killed
Santiago Nasar!"
Analysis
The normalization of honor killing, even its elevation to a
necessary and respectable action, is made clear in the fate of
the Vicario brothers. Their lawyer lauds their honorable
behavior in "defense of honor," and rather than being
sentenced for first-degree murder they are jailed for a mere
three years. That the twins immediately turn themselves in to
the church after their "barbarous work of death" shows that
they don't think of the killing as criminal or sinful. They expect,
rightfully as it turns out, that the Church will not condemn them
for this violation of the Fifth Commandment because it was
incited by honor. Rather than being horrified or alarmed by
their confessed crime, the priest "recalled the surrender as an
act of great dignity." He seems almost to admire them for it.
There are other religious overtones to events, particularly
when the Vicario twins go immediately to their pigsty to get
"sacrificial tools" and butchers' knives, which they sharpen in
readiness for the murder. Their actions link animal sacrifice to
human sacrifice with definite undertones of the crucifixion and
sacrifice of Christ. Like Jesus, Santiago is an innocent falsely
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Chapter Summaries 18
accused and executed.
Vengeance and complicity are intertwined with confusion and
ineptitude as the Vicario brothers ready themselves for
murder. The twins wait for Santiago at the milk shop but watch
for him at the wrong door of his house. At the meat market
they announce with great bravado that they're sharpening their
knives to kill Santiago. No one there "paid any attention to
them" because the twins had such a good reputation and were
clearly very drunk. Thus, the disbelieving butchers may also be
complicit in the killing. Even so, they show more compassion
than the Vicario twins. One butcher the narrator interviews
claims he could not sacrifice a cow "if he'd known it before,"
and another says "a slaughterer [is not] predisposed to killing a
human being." The Vicario brothers, however, have just this
predisposition.
The twins make inept choices in their hunt for Santiago.
Instead of pursuing their prey, the ostensibly vengeful twins
waste time relaxing and drinking coffee at the home of Pablo's
fiancée. Back at the milk shop, they drink yet another bottle of
liquor, getting drunker, and they seem less resolute than
before to kill Santiago. They stare at Santiago's bedroom
window, not considering that he might not turn on a light
before he goes to sleep.
Nearly all the townspeople become complicit in the murder.
Here, again, numerous points of view and voices are
intertwined to help explain why the killing was allowed to
occur. As each townsperson learns of the Vicario twins'
murderous plan, each finds some excuse to ignore it or forget
to warn anyone about it. Most people fail to take the
information seriously or to act on it. As residents pass on to
others what they deem an absurd threat, pretty soon the whole
town knows of the impending murder. No ordinary citizen,
policeman, mayor, or priest takes the twins seriously or takes
action to stop them. All are therefore complicit in the crime. It's
almost comical when the mayor takes away the Vicario
brothers' knives: clearly they can return to their abattoir and
get others, which is exactly what they do. The mayor refuses
to hold them "on suspicion," and he "congratulate[s] himself for
having made the right decision" in disarming the twins when he
sees Santiago on the dock awaiting the bishop. Only Clotilde
Armenta tries to warn Santiago's household via a message
given to a beggar woman, but it's difficult to believe anyone in
that impressive house would open the door to, let alone listen
to, such a poor messenger.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
Confused memory propels the inevitable. Clotilde Armenta had
told Father Amador what was about to happen, and she insists
he remember to tell Santiago's mother, but the priest forgets
the warning in his rush to see the bishop. He even passes the
Santiago residence without warning Santiago's mother. Clearly
the priest bears some guilt for the murder. Luis Enrique, too,
blames his drunkenness for failing to remember the Vicario
brothers' boast to him about the murder they're about to
commit. Had he not, perhaps by chance, fallen into a drunken
stupor at home, he might have recalled what he'd heard and
sounded a warning. As it is, Santiago is dead by the time Luis
wakes up.
A fatal choice further condemns Santiago, although the
opposite choice might have saved him. Pedro Vicario considers
the family honor restored when the mayor takes away their
first set of knives. Having his knife confiscated sufficed to fulfill
Pedro's need for vengeance, but Pablo is not satisfied and
insists they carry out the murder. If Pedro had chosen
adamantly to refuse to go with Pablo, perhaps Santiago might
have lived. That he succumbs to Pablo's plan—to Pablo's
physical force—means Santiago will die.
It is Santiago's choice that he, the narrator, and Luis Enrique
go to serenade the newlyweds at the former Xius residence.
This choice not only keeps him away from the Vicario brothers,
and may have prevented his learning about the danger he was
in, but it also displays his good-natured innocence. His
carefree spirit reveals his clear conscience, attesting to the
fact that he had no idea he was the Vicario twins' target and
further supporting the fact that it was not he who had violated
their sister. Later, his choice to enter his house from the back
door makes a mockery of the Vicario brothers' surveillance of
his front door.
Flowers represent death and human indifference to it. One
butcher tells the narrator that the Vicario brothers name their
hogs after flowers so they can slaughter them with a clearer
conscience.
The saying about the falcon most likely references the future
life of Angela Vicario. "A falcon who chases a warlike crane can
only hope for a life of pain" may refer to her future loneliness
after she lies about Santiago. She plucks him from among the
many men's names she knows, but the trauma of his fate turns
out to be devastating for her.
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Chapter Summaries 19
Chapter 4
Summary
The murder of Santiago Nasar is barbaric, and the body lies
exposed in the Nasar living room because no freezer in town is
big enough to hold it. The body is rotting in the intense heat.
The mayor Don Lázaro Aponte demands that Father Carmen
Amador conduct an immediate autopsy even though the priest
had entered the seminary before graduating from medical
school. Amador obeys, using a couple of scalpels and some
hardware tools to examine the body. He finds that Santiago
has seven fatal wounds, with many other horrific stab wounds
that sliced through his body. Santiago's body is so hacked to
pieces that he must be buried quickly.
The narrator, María Alejandrina Cervantes, and others are
plagued by the body's terrible smell, even when they're not
near it. The stench seems to permeate the whole town. The
odor keeps the jailed Vicario twins awake and ill at ease. The
murderers worry about being victims of a revenge killing by
Santiago's family or others in the Arab community. Pablo
Vicario cannot sleep, and he becomes ill, perhaps from some
food he's eaten. The twins are transferred to a jail in a larger
city, Riohacha. Meanwhile, the Arab community, "comprised ...
of peaceful immigrants," is not intent on revenge for Santiago's
death. Even Santiago's mother does not seek vengeance. She
and the other Arab families feel sadness rather than anger.
Pura Vicario packs up her possessions and leaves with her
family for Manaure, a town she feels is safer from potential
Arab revenge. When Pablo Vicario gets out of jail, he lives near
his mother and marries his former sweetheart, Prudencia
Cotes. Pedro Vicario, "without love or a job," joins the military,
where he goes out on a mission into guerilla territory and is
never heard from again.
Most of the people in town feel that the real victim in this
tragedy is Bayardo San Román because he has lost everything.
"Poor Bayardo," as they call him, retreats to the house he
bought for his wife where he drinks himself into a perpetual
stupor. The quantities of liquor he consumes almost kill him;
he's carried out of the house in a hammock and brought back
to town. It's as if he's dead in life. The narrator and his brother
visit the now empty house and find Angela Vicario's valise,
which contains "old wives' artifices [for deceiving] her
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
husband." The narrator later learns that Angela never used
these tricks on Bayardo, with whom she wanted to be honest.
She later tells the narrator why she refused to deceive
Bayardo: "The more I thought about it, the more I realized it
was all something dirty that shouldn't be done to
anybody"—especially not to her husband.
Years later the narrator tries to interview Bayardo, but the man
is aggressively uncommunicative. The narrator has better luck
when he finds and interviews Angela Vicario. She lives in a
barren "death village" where she makes a poor living doing
embroidery. She is "mature and witty" in her answers to the
narrator's questions. She speaks freely but absolutely refuses
to name the man with whom she'd had sex prior to her
marriage to Bayardo. She describes how her mother's beating
when she was returned home caused her to obsess over
Bayardo. "I went crazy over him," she says. She begins to write
weekly love letters to Bayardo and keeps up her letter writing
for years. Bayardo never replies, yet Angela is content just
knowing he receives them. Then one day 17 years after their
wedding, Bayardo comes to see her at her home while she's
embroidering with some other women. He says only, "Well,
here I am." His valise contains nearly 2,000 of Angela's
letters—unopened.
Analysis
Extreme violence is depicted throughout this section. Graphic
descriptions of Santiago's dead body and his autopsy reveal in
hideous detail how violently and horribly he died. The violence
inflicted on him by the Vicario brothers is almost unimaginable
as his body has been hacked nearly to pieces. The autopsy
itself, conducted ineptly by an untrained priest, further
mutilates and inflicts even greater violence on Santiago's body.
The autopsy described is surreal in the incompetent bungling
of the priest and the violent havoc inflicted on the corpse. After
the autopsy, Santiago's body is transformed, "completely
different," and his once kind face takes on a hostile
appearance, as if perhaps in death he's enraged by the
"ferocity of [his] fate." Violence is even visited on the dogs that
are killed to silence their howls at the scent of Santiago's
blood.
Santiago's murder is likened to Christ's death when the
autopsy reveals a stab wound on the palm of the hand that
"looked like a stigma of the crucified Christ." Santiago is
therefore compared to Jesus, and this endows Santiago with
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Chapter Summaries 20
an otherworldly innocence, even sainthood. Like Jesus,
Santiago is an innocent who is accused and sacrificed by the
indifference of both ordinary citizens and religious leaders.
The Vicario brothers and their family fear retributive
vengeance from the Arab community in town, which is why the
twins are transferred to a distant jail and the Vicario family
relocates to a distant town. There is more than a little racial
bigotry underlying this fear of vengeance. Pedro Vicario tells
the narrator that he's plagued by the idea of "some trick of the
Turks." (Turks are not Arabs.) The Arabs of the town, however,
don't seek revenge; they feel "perplexed and sad" by what has
happened to Santiago. The Arabs' attitude stems largely from
their understanding of communal complicity, because they
recognize that all the townspeople could be to blame for the
murder.
The Vicario twins refuse to make confession to the priest
because "they had nothing to repent" for a murder that
avenged dishonor. That the brothers demand to be marched
out of jail in broad daylight instead of secretly at night shows
that not only do they lack remorse for their butchery but are
actually proud of it. In this culture, honor killing enhanced "their
status as men."
The people of the town view the Vicario brothers as having
been true to their fate and carrying it out with dignity. Thus, the
only person whose fate is deemed tragic is that of Bayardo,
"who had lost everything." After Bayardo recovers from the
alcoholism that nearly kills him, he disappears. It seems his
conjugal trauma leaves him bitter, aggressive, and resolutely
uncommunicative. Bayardo's fate seems to be to suffer lifelong
psychic torture brought on by the incident on his wedding
night.
When the narrator finally gets to speak with Angela Vicario,
she likens Santiago to a bird, describing him as a "sparrow
hawk," or American kestrel. The kestrel is the smallest
American raptor and, unlike the large and magnificent falcons
that snare airborne prey, it seeks its food while perched on a
branch and then swoops down to gobble a lowly grasshopper
or small mammal. It's likely Angela is belittling Santiago by
using this comparison.
In his interview with her, the narrator learns of several choices
Angela has made that changed the course of her life and the
lives of others. Angela says she "had chosen Santiago Nasar's
name because she thought her brothers would never dare go
up against him." Her choice has deadly consequences. Unlike
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
Bayardo, Angela chooses to speak freely about "the disaster of
her wedding night," although she adamantly refuses to admit
that it was not Santiago who had relations with her. Under no
circumstances will she divulge who did. She chooses to
maintain and defend her deceit in these crucial matters.
It is Angela's fate to fall fiercely in love with Bayardo after her
mother's beating; she is now living in spinster-like solitude. She
succumbs to her fate totally in her obsessive letter writing to
Bayardo, a practice that seems to keep her hope alive for her.
Although her unrequited love may seem like a cruel fate,
Angela experiences it as a birth into a fully realized person.
She openly and freely affirms this fate, which is to love and be
with Bayardo. In embracing her obsessive love, Angela
becomes "mistress of her fate for the first time" in her life. Her
fated love transforms her from a powerless young woman into
a "lucid, overbearing, mistress of her own free will ... she
recognized no ... other service than that of her obsession." Her
choice to embrace her fated love bears fruit when Bayardo
returns to her. Angela's realization of her personhood and
power explodes the rather pathetic misogyny that propels the
novella's tragedy.
Superstition and the supernatural are revealed in the strange
potion Susan Abdala prepares to cure Pedro Vicario's
indigestion and in the vision of the "phosphorescent bird" seen
flying over Xius's old house, which reminds people that
Bayardo might still be living there. The sighting of the strange
bird saves Bayardo's life. As objects keep disappearing from
the house after Bayardo departs, Xius thinks it's the spirit of his
dead wife who's taking them. The mayor organizes a séance in
which a spiritualist makes contact with Xius's dead wife and
confirms that it is she who is "recovering the knick-knacks of
her happiness for her house of death."
Chapter 5
Summary
The narrator explains that Santiago Nasar's murder becomes
the obsession of the townspeople for years. They try to make
sense of what happened, but it is all confusing and absurd. The
narrator describes the seemingly incomprehensible actions
and decisions of many townspeople who either were with or
saw Santiago. For inexplicable reasons, each chose to do or
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Chapter Summaries 21
not do something that made it inevitable that Pedro Vicario and
Pablo Vicario would find and murder Santiago. Had each acted
on what they knew or saw, perhaps Santiago's life might have
been saved.
Twelve days after the murder, an investigating magistrate
shows up in town. Everyone tries to give testimony before him.
Each person has a story or is "eager to show off his own
important role in the drama." Over two decades later the
narrator finds some documents about the investigation. The
narrator learns that the magistrate was overwhelmed by the
volume of coincidences that seemed to conspire in Santiago's
death. The magistrate was also struck by the total lack of
evidence implicating Santiago in Angela Vicario's shame.
According to the documents, when the magistrate questions
Angela, all she'll say is, "He was my perpetrator," a fact she'll
later deny. The trial lasts three trying and perplexing days,
revealing to the magistrate and seemingly everyone else the
"overwhelming proof of [Santiago's] innocence."
The narrator then goes on to describe the fatal
misunderstandings, coincidences, and accidents that led to
Santiago's murder. So many people could have done
something to save him, but for some inexplicable reason none
did—even though everyone in town knew Santiago was going
to be killed. Some people tried to warn him but lost their nerve.
Others began to think the threat was baseless. Divina Flor lies
to Santiago's mother, telling her the absent Santiago is
upstairs in his bed. When Plácida Linero sees the Vicario
brothers running toward her house, she locks the door against
them—unaware that by now Santiago is also racing for the
safety of his home. His mother has locked him out, leaving him
to his cruel fate. The twins cut him to ribbons against the
bolted door of his house.
By 6 o'clock that morning everyone is aware that the Vicario
twins are going to kill Santiago. The narrator's friend, Cristo
Bedoya, gets a gun (unloaded) and races to find and save
Santiago. He can't find him. No one in town seems to know
where he is, yet they gather in the town square to witness the
murder they know is about to happen. Meanwhile, Santiago
stops at his fiancée's house, but she's furious with him because
she thinks he'll be forced to marry Angela, thus leaving her in
the lurch. She yells, "I hope they kill you!" and so Santiago
leaves the safety of her home. Her father, Nahir Miguel, finally
warns Santiago about what awaits him. Despite this, Santiago
leaves, heads for home, and is hacked to pieces before his
barred door. He somehow manages to stagger into the opened
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
rear door of the house, saying, "They've killed me" as he
collapses face down on the kitchen floor.
Analysis
Chance plays a crucial role in explaining events and bringing
about the fulfillment of Santiago's fate. It's only by chance that
years later the narrator finds fragments of court papers that
shed a bit of light on the proceedings decades earlier. The
papers he finds, however, mainly reveal the perplexity and
frustration of the magistrate who was hearing the case. The
papers make clear that the magistrate "never thought it
legitimate that life should make use of so many coincidences ...
so that there should be the untrammeled fulfillment of a death
so clearly foretold." When Cristo Bedoya checks to see if
Santiago is in his bedroom, he finds that the door is locked
from the inside because, by chance, Santiago had chosen to
leave the house via his mother's bedroom. It is pure chance
that as Cristo looks for Santiago he comes upon a sick man on
the street and stops for seven minutes to help him. Perhaps he
might have found and warned Santiago during those few
minutes. Just before Santiago is killed, Yamil Shaium shouts to
him to come into his store. Santiago looks around to see who's
calling him, but Yamil has gone inside to get his gun and, by
chance, he can't find bullets for it, so Santiago walks away.
Crucially, Santiago's mother chances to find and read the
warning note on her floor after her son is already dead.
Chance combines with unfortunate choices to seal Santiago's
fate. Divina Flor chooses to lie twice—to Santiago's mother and
to Cristo Bedoya—by telling them that Santiago is safe at home
when she knows he is not. Celeste Dangond invites Santiago in
for coffee, but Santiago chooses instead to hurry home to
change his clothes. Yamil Shaium chooses to consult with
Cristo Bedoya before warning Santiago of the danger he's in,
yet he never gets the chance to speak with Bedoya. When
Cristo fails to locate Santiago, he chooses to look for him at his
house. Santiago is not there, but Cristo decides to take
Santiago's gun, only to find out after the killing that it's not
loaded. When the mayor learns that the Vicario brothers have
gotten new butcher knives, he intends "to take care of it at
once." Instead he chooses to go into a social club "to check on
a date for dominoes." By the time he comes out, Santiago has
been killed.
All these people who are involved in all the chance events—or
who made ineffectual choices—are in some way complicit in
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Chapter Summaries 22
the murder of Santiago. Perhaps they are not as guilty as those
who knew and did absolutely nothing, but the curse of the
townspeople is that they must "go on living without an exact
knowledge of the place and the mission assigned to [them] by
fate." The narrator describes the many people who saw
Santiago that morning. However, when Cristo, desperate to
find his friend, asks about sightings, everyone denies having
seen Santiago. When Cristo tells Victoria Guzmán that the
Vicario twins are looking to kill Santiago, she brushes it off:
"Those poor boys won't kill anybody," she says—and does
nothing. The priest rationalizes his indifference, insisting that
his only responsibility is to save souls, not lives. The fate of
many complicit citizens is shaped by guilt. Some go insane
while others die from the shock of what they've done, and the
consequences for others push them into a harsh and tragic
future. All are haunted by what happened and their role in it,
especially those who strolled toward the plaza to watch the
murder as if it were the day's entertainment or spectacle.
Maybe they wanted to see what they had wrought or to watch
the revelation of fate.
Birds continue to be ill omens. The cocks that crow at dawn
reveal the confusion of the townspeople who are trying to
make sense of what happened. Plácida Linero, Santiago's
mother, berates herself for forgetting that birds are an ill omen
while trees are a "magnificent augury." When Santiago finally
realizes the Vicario brothers are out to kill him, he looks "like a
little wet bird," which may represent his immersion in his awful
fate or his role as a falcon's prey.
Clearly fate is working to ensure the murder of Santiago. So
inescapable is this fate that everyone involved feels it was
foretold. Even when Santiago hears hints of what might
happen to him, he seems unconcerned: "his reaction was not
one of panic ... but rather the bewilderment of innocence."
Santiago knows he is innocent and can't imagine why the
Vicario brothers want to kill him. Santiago's purity and assured
innocence make him unable to understand what's really
happening. His bewilderment makes him incapable of taking
any action that would alter the fate that awaits him, but
perhaps he was in the grip of a fate he could not oppose. The
magistrate had noted in the margin of a document that "fatality
makes us invisible." That may be the reason those who saw
Santiago did not see him; those who tried to find him couldn't.
He was visible only to fate's terrible glare, an ephemeral ghost
to everyone else.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
g Quotes
"Trying to put the broken mirror of
memory back together from so
many scattered shards."
— Narrator, Chapter 1
This quote reveals the hopeless task of assembling the faulty,
discordant, and fragmentary memories of the townspeople
who experienced the murder in order to create a coherent and
truthful picture of what actually happened. The narrator tells
the reader right at the start that the story he tries to put
together from innumerable bits of unreliable memories will
necessarily be incomplete and unsatisfying.
"The time has come for you to be
tamed."
— Santiago Nasar, Chapter 1
Here, Santiago Nasar shows that even good-natured, open-
hearted males in the novella are sexist and misogynistic. He is
speaking to Divina Flor, the daughter of Santiago's housemaid,
and he's informing her that as an adult male it is his prerogative
to force her to submit to the power and desires of an adult
man. The quote clearly reveals the gender roles that dominate
that culture.
"Don't be a savage ... Make believe
it was a human being."
— Santiago Nasar, Chapter 1
Santiago is sickened by the sight of Victoria Guzmán and
Divina skinning and quartering the rabbits they have killed for
dinner. Santiago implores them to think of the rabbits as
humans, which he believes would make the women act less
violently. The quote not only equates the lives of animals with
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Quotes 23
that of humans (as happens in several places in the novella), it
also foreshadows the deadly violence that will be carried out
on Santiago, thus showing that Santiago is wrong in thinking
that humans are or should be treated with less violence and
cruelty than nonhumans.
"The bishop [made] the sign of the
cross ... mechanically ... without
malice or inspiration."
— Narrator, Chapter 1
The bishop disdains the people of the town so much that he
will not even set foot on town land. This quote reveals he has
forsaken the townspeople as inveterate and irredeemable
sinners—something a bishop should never do. He carries out
his religious duty like an automaton to distance himself from
the flock he despises and of whom he thinks as unworthy of
his ministry.
"No one ... wondered whether
Santiago Nasar had been warned,
because it seemed impossible to
all that he hadn't."
— Narrator, Chapter 1
This quote sums up the confusion that makes the townspeople
complicit in the murder of Santiago. It foreshadows the
accidents, indifferent attitudes, and bizarre coincidences that
somehow prevent or disincline the populace to warn Santiago
that Pedro and Pablo Vicario are intent on finding and
murdering him. The confusion expressed here is just one
example of what seems like mass misunderstanding. The
people know that everyone knows Santiago is to be murdered,
but they conclude, without any evidence to the contrary, that
because they know, Santiago must also know. Their misguided
assumption, and their subsequent inaction, makes them
complicit in his death.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
"The brothers were brought up to
be men. The girls had been reared
to get married."
— Narrator, Chapter 2
Girls and boys, men and women, are brought up differently
from each other in Latin American culture. This quote sums up
the situation succinctly. Men, such as the Vicario twins, are
raised to exercise machismo, or manly aggression. Women,
such as their sister, Angela, are brought up with stifling
overprotection. She is raised to be the meek and obedient wife
of whatever husband her parents choose.
"She nailed [the name] to the wall
with her well-aimed dart."
— Narrator, Chapter 2
Angela Vicario plucks Santiago's name out of the air in a
manner similar to the way a falcon snares its prey on the wing.
As the falcon's clutches will be fatal for the bird it catches, so
the man Angela names, Santiago, will also be caught and killed.
"The Vicario twins went to the ...
pigsty where they kept their
sacrificial tools and picked out the
two best knives."
— Narrator, Chapter 3
The slaughter of pigs is likened to the sacrifice of an innocent
person, Santiago. The Vicario brothers get the knives they use
to butcher pigs and sharpen them as lethal weapons to
sacrifice Santiago. The use of sacrificial underscores
Santiago's innocence and his fate as a martyr to their
vengeance.
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Quotes 24
"[Pablo] put the knife in [Pedro's]
hand and dragged him off ... in
search of their sister's lost honor."
— Narrator, Chapter 3
Pedro felt that the mayor's confiscation of their first set of
knives satisfied his desire for revenge against Santiago Nasar.
Pablo vehemently disagrees and, after a heated argument,
physically drags Pedro off to help him commit the honor killing.
The quote emphasizes the power of the macho will to violence
and vengeance among the twins.
"I didn't know what to do. [I
thought] it wasn't any business of
mine."
— Father Carmen Amador, Chapter 3
Clotilde Armenta specifically told Father Carmen Amador to
warn Santiago or his mother about the impending murder. The
priest's complicity is plain in his statement that he just didn't
think it was any of his business. There is no excuse to fail to
save someone's life if at all possible. The priest is among those
most guilty of complicity because he knew it was going to
happen but somehow still didn't take it seriously.
"It was inconceivable ... to avenge
a death for which we all could
have been to blame."
— Narrator, Chapter 4
After interviewing the multitude of townspeople who were
witnesses to the murder or who knew about it in advance, the
narrator can conclude only that everyone who knew but did
nothing to stop it is complicit in the crime. Here he is
commenting on the reason the Arabs didn't take revenge for
Santiago's murder. The Arabs understand that everyone in
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Symbols 25

town who knew but did nothing to save Santiago is guilty of the
"So many coincidences [for the]
murder and must shoulder the blame.
untrammeled fulfillment of a death
so clearly foretold."
"There was only one victim:
Bayardo ... other actors [fulfilled] — Narrator, Chapter 5

their part of the destiny that life

had assigned them."
— Narrator, Chapter 4
The townspeople feel, perhaps justifiably, that the main players
in the murder of Santiago were just cogs in the great wheel of
fate, which foretold Santiago's doom. Because it was these
actors' destiny to fulfill an inevitable fate, they are not
considered victims. Their suffering is their destiny, and they
should not be pitied. Bayardo San Román, however, lost
everything when he lost his wife, so the people save their pity
for him. Still, it's odd that they discount Bayardo's role in
initiating the tragedy. Had he chosen to ignore Angela's impure
state, none of the terrible events would have occurred.
The magistrate sees Santiago's death as foretold, as fated, but
he seems to fail to see the role of each person in the town who
became instrumental in bringing it about. Like the narrator, the
magistrate is overwhelmed by the chance events and strange
coincidences that led to the murder. He seems to suggest,
however, that the murder, being foretold, would have happened
in any case, without all the bizarre coincidences.
"The people [came] back from the
docks ... to take up positions ... to
witness the crime."
— Narrator, Chapter 5

This scene is perhaps the most damning in the novella.

"None of us could go on living Everyone in town knew Santiago was about to be killed, yet no
without an exact knowledge [of] one—by design or by accident—warned him. They all instead
show up in the town plaza to watch the murder being carried
the mission assigned to us by out. It seems as if for them it is a spectacle, or more mildly, a
fate." confirmation of what they knew would happen. Still, it is the
sense that all these onlookers are complicit in the murder
taking place before them that is almost as horrifying as the
— Narrator, Chapter 5
death of Santiago as he's hacked to pieces.

The narrator, like the townspeople, is desperate to know why

the murder of Santiago was allowed to happen. He, like they, is
consumed with the desire to know the truth and to understand l Symbols
why it happened. He refers to the people involved as carrying
out a mission that would lead to a preordained fate, but he
can't comprehend why this fate was foretold and why all the
bewildering events that led to it were necessary. The
Falconry
confluence of events, accidents, and coincidences was just too
well orchestrated to be pure chance. He must know why so
many coincidences were arranged by fate for such an awful The book opens with an epigraph about falconry: "The pursuit
outcome. of love is like falconry." Santiago Nasar is a falconer, and his
fate may reflect the falcon's pursuit of prey. In the novella

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
falconry even more closely represents fate and how arbitrary
and lethal it might be.
People who own falcons train the birds to hunt and then enjoy
a rather grisly spectacle. When the falcon is released, its owner
watches as it soars upward searching for a bird it can snare in
its talons. (This horrific scene mimics the death of Santiago.)
The relevance to the novella is clear: Angela seems to pick
Santiago's name out of thin air, the same way a falcon catches
a bird in flight. It is his random, strange, and meaningless fate
to be murdered just as it is the fate of the falcon's prey to be
the one bird the predator grabs. There are references to
falconry, and its lethal arbitrariness, in several places in the
novella.
The Bishop
The bishop symbolizes unattainable holiness and morality.
These characteristics condemn him because he ignores these
characteristics in his dealings with the townspeople. The
bishop affects a religious superiority to the townspeople who,
in his eyes, are so sinful they are unworthy of even the touch of
his foot on town land. If, as the Church teaches, all men are
sinners, it is the Church's role and responsibility to lead them in
the path of righteousness, not to reject them and leave them to
wallow in their spiritual darkness.
That the entire town turns out to see the bishop likely
represents the hypocrisy of the populace. The townspeople go
through the motions of religious observance and respect but
then ignore its teachings and go about their mundane and
sinful daily lives. It's as if they want to have as little to do with
the bishop as he wants to have with them.
Natural World
As symbols, elements of the natural world—especially flowers,
birds, and trees—appear in the novella with situational irony
(when what is expected to happen is the opposite of what
happens). Flowers most often represent death or human
detachment from brutal killing. Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario
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Themes 26
give their pigs the names of flowers, for this makes it easier for
them to slaughter the pigs. It also serves to separate the
slaughter of pigs from the slaughter of humans, although that
connection is made in the novella. In other places in the story,
flowers are referenced as key elements of funerals, or their
scent makes a character think of death.
The symbolism of birds is more ambiguous. Most likely birds
represent omens of ill fortune. In some cases, as in Santiago's
dream, they are clearly an evil omen. That Santiago owns a
falcon may represent this bird of prey as a bringer of arbitrary
death.
Trees are also ambiguous and changing symbols, and they
occur mainly in dreams. In some cases trees are good omens
and are called "magnificent." In other cases they are seen as
"ominous," as foreshadowing evil or tragedy.
m Themes
Fate, Chance, and Choice
The death of Santiago Nasar is "foretold," indicating that he
was fated to be murdered. Truly, almost all the incidents in the
book point toward this inescapable fate. For example, all the
townspeople know of the impending murder, but until the very
end no one does anything to prevent it.
Santiago's fate is sealed by chance occurrences that draw him
inexorably toward his death. The warning note slipped under
his mother's door is ignored, or noticed but then not read, or
read but too late. Townspeople who might have warned
Santiago to avoid the Vicario brothers are often distracted by
something and then forget their intention to warn him. Chance,
or accident, plays an important role in Santiago's awful fate.
Choice, too, is crucial in furthering Santiago's murder.
Townspeople choose to ignore the rumors that he's to be
murdered because they find the information unbelievable, so
even if they have the chance to warn him, they choose not to.
Others refuse to believe that Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario
are capable of murder, and for that reason, they choose not to
warn Santiago. Choices often involve actions that make
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide
Santiago's murder inevitable. Had the priest not chosen to rush
off to see the bishop, he might not have forgotten to warn
Santiago's mother. Had his fiancée not chosen to throw
Santiago out of her house, he might have lived. Had his mother
not chosen to bar the front door, Santiago might have found
safety from his killers. Crucially, had Angela Vicario chosen not
to name Santiago, he would not have been hunted down and
killed.
All these mundane but ultimately lethal coincidences have
consequences as if they conspire to see the murder of an
innocent man accomplished. The author plays these various
factors against each other—demonstrating their contradictions
and consequences—throughout the novella.
Memory, Confusion, and Truth
Almost every witness the narrator interviews has confused
memories about what happened on the day Santiago was
murdered. The unreliability of memory is a key factor in the
fatal climax of the novella. Fuzzy memories, perhaps muddled
by everyday distractions or preoccupations, make it impossible
for the narrator to put together a coherent story about what
really happened on the day of the murder.
Not only are memories muddled, but they contradict
themselves from one interview to the next. The same person
may attest to one event in one interview but then report
something altogether opposite at the next interview. Of course,
each witness professes a different set of facts about what
happened on that terrible day. The witnesses cannot even
agree on what the weather was like on the day of the murder.
Clearly, it is impossible to arrive at any semblance of truth
about an incident when memory is so unreliable. The confusion
and contradictions related to the narrator by the many
witnesses he interviews just make the fatal event more
inexplicable. Through this haze of human confusion and
capricious memory the truth can never be known.
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Themes 27
Gender and Honor
The action in the story is propelled by the different cultural
norms assigned to each gender. Men are free actors whose
behavior is largely unregulated and unquestioned. Even when
they openly commit murder, the crime is not deemed very
serious if it is motivated by an acceptably male role. Men treat
women badly, in some cases like objects with no agency.
Divina Flor's mother accepted, or was resigned, to being
forced into the role of mistress to her master (male employer).
If he raped her, that was also an acceptable part of the macho
culture. Even Santiago tells Divina Flor that she should be
"tamed" by a man.
In this Latin culture women are seen as hothouse flowers to be
protected from what is viewed as the inevitable predations of
men. Angela's mother was rigid in bringing up her daughter,
never letting her go out unescorted. Because women are
defined as beings who have no agency, if they are
compromised (lose their virginity), or even if there is an
unsubstantiated rumor that they've been interfered with, it is a
given that the male partner is to blame. The woman's close
male relatives must punish the supposed deflowerer to
reinstate the woman's and the family's honor.
In this novella the author both satirizes and denounces the
macho Latin culture of honor killing. The satire arises from the
confusion among the townspeople about what actually
happened on that fateful day. Although many of the
contradictory reports of events are somewhat amusing, there
is a serious, underlying critique of the Latin American culture
that can accept or take lightly the horrific murder of an
innocent man. That at one point Angela Vicario admits to the
narrator that she did not lose her virginity to Santiago only
intensifies the narrator's exasperation and outrage. Angela
knows that her brothers would kill the man she names, but she
doesn't care.
Vengeance and Complicity
The Vicario brothers are intent on taking vengeance against
the man named as a former lover of their sister, Angela. Their
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Study Guide Motifs 28

passionate hatred and the cultural norm that inflames their

anger and impels them to murder drive the action in the
novella. The author explores the cultural underpinnings of this
macho impulse to avenge supposed dishonor with horrific
bloodshed.
Perhaps more interesting is the author's exploration of the
complicity of the townspeople. Everyone in town knows the
murder is about to take place, yet through accident, choice,
laziness, or rationalization no one tries to prevent the killing. As
the narrator presents the various witness accounts, it becomes
Customs, Beliefs, and
Superstitions
Most of the characters in the novella are tied to the customs of
their culture, from macho male vengeance to the rituals of
marriage and wedding parties. The running of households and
the roles of servants strictly adhere to custom.
Yet the belief systems of the townspeople are diverse and

clear that each person's reason for doing nothing about a often unorthodox. People pay lip service to basic Christianity

crime that they know is about to be committed makes them but then act in distinctly un-Christian ways. For example, they

complicit in the murder. The author reveals the various ways know about the murder about to take place but can't be

that not only individuals and their actions (or inactions) but an bothered to do anything to prevent it. They may believe it's

entire community can be complicit in a murder. In a chilling Santiago's fate to be murdered, even though they know he's

scene in the novella, the entire population of the town gathers innocent.

in the town square to watch the murder take place. They

Some people act based on omens they perceive in dreams or
gather there because they know the murder is imminent, even
announced by seers. Their reliance on superstitious prophecy
though not one of them has done anything to stop it. That
or assurances may either paralyze them into inaction or
makes them, in a sense, co-conspirators to murder.
engender a certain complacency in them that makes action
seem unwarranted or useless.

All three are found throughout the novella and provide a

b Motifs framework for the complicity of the townspeople in the murder.
They are also frequently causative factors that lead to the
contradictory, confused, or irrelevant actions (or inactions) of

Violence and Butchery the witnesses.

Violence permeates this novella. Much of the book focuses on

the deadly intent of Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario in the
macho roles of violent avengers in defense of women's honor.
In addition, the violence against people is also reflected in, and
even equated to, the slaughter of animals.

The Vicario brothers are hog butchers. They give their pigs
flower names to make them more alien, to make their killing
more palatable. The twins use their hog-butchering knives to
kill Santiago, which further entwines the killing of animals with
the killing of humans. This in no way diminishes the horror of
murder: it exacerbates it by relegating it to the arena of food
production.

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