The Fatality of Fate

The way the townspeople console themselves after Santiago Nasar’s death reveals that their

belief in fate may have made them unable to avert his preventable death. Placida Linero, Santiago’s

mother, had ignored a note on her porch warning her about the Vicario twin’s plans to murder her

son. She had also been told that Santiago was inside at the time of the murder, so when she heard

banging on her front door, it did not occur to her that it was her own son being stabbed to death.

After the death, she had “freed herself from blame”(114), but “she never forgave herself for having

mixed up the magnificent augury of trees with the unlucky one of birds” (115). Placida Linero

doesn’t hold herself accountable for not opening the door for her son as he was stabbed to death,

but instead can’t forgive herself for not seeing the unfortunate “augury” in Santiago’s dream that

could have foretold his death. Gabriel Garcia Marquez is critiquing Placida Linero’s search for

magical signs that could warn her of her son’s fate, rather than seeing the tangible warning that was

lying on her front porch. For years after Santiago’s death, the town kept pondering the murder,

trying to figure out what role they played in the death. The narrator goes as far as to say, “none of

us could go on living without an exact knowledge of the place and the mission assigned to us by

fate” (113). The townspeople knew that they had something to do with the death, but they were sure

that their actions that day were “assigned to them by fate.” This coping strategy allows them to

blame the decisions they made that day on something outside of themselves which alleviates their

guilt, although many people were given the opportunity to warn Santiago and intentionally chose

not to. The townspeople’s belief that their actions were out of their own control caused them to

become helpless in the face of a community member’s death.