On the other hand, to hide behind a pretense of being honorable would actually be dishonorable and hypocritical. Of course, if they had ulterior motives, they would hardly admit to them and risk undoing the success of their legal defense. Were they finally allowed to go through with the murder because so many of the villagers had personal quarrels with Santiago Nassar specifically and were happy to have him killed, even if for a “crime” he didn’t commit, or was it because the concept of honor had such universal cultural importance to the villagers that the target was irrelevant, and justice had to be served? While some of the villagers’ stories suggest that the former may be accurate, the narrator seems to endorse the latter: “The lawyer stood by the thesis of homicide in legitimate defense of honor, which the court upheld in good faith, and the twins declared at the end of the trial that they would have done it again a thousand times over for the same reason” (48). If they secretly wanted to be stopped, why didn’t they give up when their intended murder weapons were taken away? Why did Bayardo San Roman choose Angela Vicario to be his bride? Were Angela Vicario and Santiago Nassar really lovers? Yes or no, why did she name him ? Did the twins really want to kill Nassar, or would they have been content with a thwarted attempt? Indeed, the narrator says “In reality it seemed that the Vicario brothers had done much more than could be imaged to have someone stop them from killing, and they had failed” (49). Ultimately, because of all the conflicting accounts, the book’s initial question–how?–is never really resolved, and more questions open up. Even the narrator admits that he and Nassar’s other friends never believed Angela Vicario and Nassar had had any kind of relationship–they thought she accused him to protect her real love, knowing how her brothers would react. Many of the villagers contradict each other, while some contradict even themselves, suggesting that at least some of them are lying at least some of the time. In seeking to understand how that came to be, the narrator relates his own memories of carousing with Nassar on the night of the wedding, the movements of Nassar and the twins that night and early the following morning, and statements made by many of the villagers about the murder and the participants over the course of the intervening twenty-seven years. “Come play with us, Santiago Nassar.” ( Source)Īccording to the narrator, the twins made no secret of their plans, and yet only a couple of people attempted (unsuccessfully) to intervene. When pressed, she named Nassar as her lover, and her brothers–twins, Pablo and Pedro–decided they had to kill Nassar to recover their family’s honor. The beautiful Angela Vicario had just been married to the mysterious newcomer Bayardo San Roman, but on their wedding night he discovered that she ws not a virgin, so he returned her in shame to her family. The only question left is not who did it or why, but how it was allowed to happen despite almost the entire population of the small Columbian village having known of the murderers’ intent well in advance of the murder. In Chronicle, a narrator who is never named recalls the day of Santiago Nassar’s murder, twenty seven years prior to the time of narration. But I’m so glad Laura, Kristen, and Sam chose it because it wound up being really fun to read with the methods and even more fun to talk about together in class. ![]() I wouldn’t have chosen it on my own because I don’t typically read books like this– magical realism, unconventional mystery, literary fiction. ![]() I was able to imagine good reasons for my group to choose any of the other three books on my list, probably because I was enthusiastic about reading all three, but I wouldn’t have chosen Chronicle if I didn’t already have to read it anyway so it was harder for me to imagine others wanting to read it. I actually didn’t expect the group to choose this book though. To compile my reading list proposal, I looked at several lists of best novels from each of the last few decades and a couple of centuries, best short novels, best novels in translation, not to mention books of poetry, short stories, essays, philosophy… This book (and others by Márquez) appeared on several of those lists, not least of which was the list of required reading for my other class–so it was easy for me to nominate it. The Superstars’ third book this semester was my pick, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez.
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