Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
Gabriel García Márquez’s ‘Chronicle Of A Death Foretold’ is a fascinating satire, a ‘tragi-comedy’ if you will, where an entire town stands by to watch a 21-year-old get murdered by a pair of twin brothers as their way of protecting their sister’s ‘honor’. The biggest irony? On the day of the murder, the Vicario twins keep telling people they’re on their way to kill the wealthy Santiago Nasar, hoping somebody would stop them. Nobody does.
Their newly wed sister Ángela Vicario, is returned home by husband Bayardo San Roman on finding out she isn’t a virgin. Before the sleep seaside town can learn about the scandal, her brothers leave home to find Santiago Nasar, named by Ángela as the cause behind the collapse of her two hour marriage.
“On the day there were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming in.”
That’s the opening line of ‘Chronicle Of A Death Foretold’, where the reader is quickly introduced to both the victim and his perpetrators almost immediately. There is no mystery over the killers’ identity, or motive, but the book probes into the question of how an entire town could let the crime take place, when almost everybody seemed to know what the Vicario brothers were up to.
Decades later, an unnamed local revisits the town to unravel the mystery of that infamous death, and ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ unfolds in a non-linear manner. His interviews reveal why no one stopped the brutal slaughter that unfolded in broad daylight. Most think the Vicario brothers are too drunk from the wedding celebrations and are bluffing, some are distracted by the Bishop’s arrival, others are too busy in their own life’s drama, some think someone must have already warned Santiago Nasar.
Class divides and racial tensions run quietly beneath the plot, as many assume the Vicario brothers wouldn’t dare lay a hand on someone of Santiago’s wealth and status. The excuses are colorful, amusing, but the ultimate truth is this: they all have the young man’s blood on their hands.
The premise of-course is absurd, that a woman’s honor should be tied to a red stain on the sheet. What’s even worse is that Ángela Vicario is nearly beaten to death by her mother and forgotten for most of ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’. Although our unnamed narrator eventually visits Ángela to uncover the truth, she answers most of his questions with striking honesty, yet when it comes to the most crucial one, she remains deliberately cryptic.
At just about 120 pages, Gabriel García Márquez tells a story that many authors can’t manage in 600. Funnily enough, I accidentally ended up reading this novella a second time because I wasn’t sure if I had already read it. A few pages in, my poor memory stirred, and I realized I had indeed read ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ some 14 or 15 years ago. Still, I kept going, because the prose is fluid, and since my brain had kindly erased most of the plot, a second read of such a slim book wasn’t going to hurt.
For any avid reader who is in a bit of a reading slump, ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ is a great pick to quickly finish a book without investing too much time. If you’re read and enjoyed other titles by Gabriel García Márquez but haven’t read this one, then it’s definitely a title you should add to your ‘to read’ list. I’ve read ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ by the author, and would recommend that too.
Rating for ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’: 4 on 5 stars.
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