Chronicle of a Death Foretold

"The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls had been reared to be married... my mother thought there were no better-reared daughters. 'They're perfect,' she was frequently heard to say. Any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer.'" Page 37

I chose this quote because I identified with the very strict, traditional ways of Colombian culture. As a first generation Eritrean, I grew up around these ideals of what consitutes a man and woman, and certain things that each had to do to prove their masculinity/femininity. Although it was not as extreme, I grew up having to know how to cook, make tea/coffee, great guests, do a lot of housework, etc. because I needed to be "prepared" for when I had a family of my own. Fortunately for myself, I was able to pursue my own educational dreams and still allowed a lot of freedom in comparison to Angela and her sisters. Their lives and upbringing all revolved around the concept of them raising families and being the ideal mothers and wives to their future husbands. Their worth was determined by their abilities to do domestic work and physical beauty. Another theme that stuck out to me was that in their culture, marriage was not based on love and sentimental feelings, and women were expected to be miserable in their marriages.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

"'They're perfect' she was frequently heard to say. 'Any man will be happy with them because they've been raised to suffer."

This quote from the novel The Chronicles of a Death Foretold further illustrates the reoccurring theme of the class relating to the colonizer/colonized and the core/periphery. In this excerpt and throughout the novel mothers serve as the "colonizer" as they continue to impose the reserved Columbian traditions on their daughters. This quote illustrates the difference in gender roles and how daughters are brought up to be wives and not not women. These differences in gender upbringings further bounds the daughters to the traditions of culture as the woman's worth is measured according to her ability to become a desired wife. This further illustrates the purpose of marriage in the traditional Columbian culture
as it is a courtship, or an agreement that is not based on love.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

"She only took the time necessary to say the name. She looked for it in the shadows, she found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names from this world and the other, and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written. 'Santiago Nasar,' she said" (47).

I chose this quote because I think it embodies a little bit of the magic realism theme that Professor Mufti was discussing in lecture. So here we have Angela Vicario telling her twin brothers the name of the man that stole her honor, or virginity, from her. The image of the butterfly nailed to the wall is emblematic of both Angela’s and Santiago Nasar’s doomed fate. With the accusation that Santiago was her perpetrator, Angela forced the hand of the community to allow, whether by sheer negligence, coincidence, or the actual act of killing, for his death to occur based on the community’s cultural moral values that give the defense of honor as a just means to kill a man. Angela represents the butterfly as well because if she doesn’t say a name, then her family will be furious at her for allowing the taker of her honor to roam the streets. Her culture views women to be creatures of servitude and to openly ignore the question that her brothers asked her about her perpetrator's name would be frowned open indubitably.

Another interesting aspect of this quote is the way in which Marquez describes Angela’s thought process as she reaches for Santiago's name to tell her brothers. He says that “many, many easily confused names” came to her mind from both the world of the living and the dead. This image now created of a butterfly harmonizing with this suggestion of both living and dead names floating around in Angela’s psyche is kind of magical. This use of magic realism seems to work against the journalistic style of the novel and blurs what is actually happening. Just how we don’t really know the whole story of Santiago’s death and why everyone thought it was unnecessary to warn him, we also get this dreamlike version of Angela’s thought process when she’s trying to accuse her offender, so we never find out if her story is true. This scene reveals the distractive haziness of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s literary techniques that can be seen throughout the novel.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

It seems like many of the marriages that take place within this society are for utilitarian reasons rather than for love, which in a way reinforces gender roles. These gender roles include the husband acting "manly", and the wife accepting her fate as a wife and accepting the marriage whether they would like to or not. Prudencia Cotes, Pablo Vicarios' future wife, says: "I never would have married him if he hadn't done what a man should do" (62). This statement shows that Pablo was expected to retrieve his sister's honor and kill Santiago if he wanted to be seen as a "man".

The idea that the woman is marrying solely for the purpose of being married whether they want to or not is further reinforced by the brief marriage between Bayardo and Angela, "From the moment he finally appeared in frock coat and top hat until he fled the dance with the creature of his torment" (41). Angela is described as "the creature of his torment", implying that the marriage is more of a torturous experience for Angela, rather than an enjoyable one.

The only marriage that seems to have occurred out of love rather than utilitarian purposes is the marriage of the widower Xius. Xius declares the difference between his marriage and that of the younger generations to Bayardo by stating, "you young people dont understand the motives of the heart" as he attempts to keep his house from being sold to Bayardo (36). Xius was trying to explain that the house held sentimental value and contained memories of his deceased wife that he loved, however the house is ultimately sold to Bayardo for a large sum of money that drove Xius to tears of rage that he should have to choose between love for his wife and the utilitarian purposes of money. By choosing to accept the money, it is ultimately seen that marriage for utilitarian purposes prove to be more important than marriage for love.

Chronicles

"'They looked like two children,' she told me. And that frightened her, because she'd always felt that only children were capable of everything." [55]

This line really intrigues me. Clotilde Armenta comments that Pablo and Pedro Vicario seemed like two children while they drink and openly plan a murder in her store. Children are capable of everything because people believe they are innocent and do not have the capacity of hurting something or someone intentionally. Children are seen as innocent and oblivious, and they are thus capable of getting away with the things they do. The fact that Armenta sees the two brothers as children make it clear that she sees them as capable of committing the crime and getting away with it.

In a way, the whole town can be seen as being childlike. They all are conceived to be innocent of the crime, and oblivious as to the events that are happening. Caught up in the events of the day, the whole town lets a man die. All are caught up in believing that the crime would never occur. It is this naivete of the town that allows events become unclear and perpetuates the death of Santiago Nasar.

Season

I'm not sure if we're supposed to post today or not so I guess I will say some more about "Season of Migration to the North." I think another interesting binary in the novel was that of hot and cold, or more specifically "ice" and "warmth." Salih repeats the word "ice" throughout the entire novel. This represents the North and he contrasts this coldness of the North with the warmth of the South. Mustafa longs for the North while the women he seduces seem to possess a natural longing for the wild, warmth of the South. This is just another binary that I found in the novel and wanted to point out.

moretti

Moretti notes

• studies canon

core and periphery

• ex: novel: style is core (western influence), content is periphery (foreign)
• Nation/state developed the same time in europe.

one unequal (english language vs other laguages, European western influences on the east)

• Dominance of english literature leads to a decrease of other languages

Divsion of labor (Marxist term)= Capital

• Relations of power unevenly distributed in literature terms = symbolic Capital

Tree VS. Wave

• Tree is symbol for diversuty. Branches in tree grow out representing unity.
• Wave symbol for assimilation. Waves vertake other things. (larger power)