Summary
Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez depicts the story behind Santiago Nasar's plotted assassination. The story is told in first story narration by a reporter who was close friends with Santiago. It began with going back through time to retell the actual day Santiago Nasar was killed. He had woken up due to a bad dream and told his mother, but his mother misinterpreted all the signs in the dream as being health for him, so he did not worry about it too much (Marquez 6). He kept going about his day to go see a bishop that was due to arrive, but the bishop only went in passing, and did not stay long in the town. Different neighbors retold the reporter different parts of the day that Santiago Nasar was killed, and it was more than obvious that everybody in town knew what was going to happen to Santiago.
The rest of the chapter proceeded with the backwards motion of mentioning of Angela Vicario, and her wedding with Bayardo San Roman. His strange arrival caused a bit of commotion to the town, but then everybody soon learned about him and did not worry about him too much. Angela says that she does not want to marry Bayardo, but her family convinces her to because he is rich and she can learn to love him. Their wedding day comes and everybody has a good time. Santiago Nasar has not been killed yet, and he has tried to estimate the price of the entire wedding. Then, when the celebrations ended, Bayardo and Angela go off on their honeymoon in a house Bayardo bought for Angela nearby, only to return her back home. He learned that she has married him without being a virgin (something taken very seriously) and thus Angela's mom beats her. Then Angela's twin brothers ask her who was it that did it to her, and she tells him it was Santiago (Marquez 47). That was how the complot to kill Santiago Nasar arose.
The next chapter takes place in court, people testifying and recounting the day of Santiago's death. The Vicario brothers said that they would have done it again had they been given other chances to do so, and then readers learn about how these brothers made their plans. They used sacrificial knives and sharpened them at the butcher shop. Everybody who saw them that day claimed they all thought the brothers were only drunk and did not know what they were saying. Eventually the whole town found out of what was going to happen, including the mayor, but all he did to supposedly "stop" these brothers was to take their weapons away. Nonetheless, they came back to the butcher shop with another pair of knives. It was also learned here that the brothers had a disagreement about what to do, but eventually agreed on getting the job done.
Quote
"Nor did Santiago Nasar recognize the omen. He had slept little and poorly, without getting undressed, and he woke up with a headache and a sediment of copper stirrup on his palate, and he interpreted them as the natural havoc of the wedding revels that had gone on until after midnight" (Marquez 4).
Reaction
During the first few chapters read, it can be confusing to understand the plot of what is going on in the book. Only after a while can it be understood that the narrator is working backwards, retelling the story in a backwards way, and then working forwards. It is also confusing how no one seemed to have warn Santiago, even if practically the entire town knew ahead of time. It seems suspicious that no one seemed to want to help Santiago, especially considering that he was rich. It could be a possibility that no one warned him because they were afraid of the Vicario brothers, but also because they may have felt Santiago deserved it.
I chose this quote because just within the first pages it was more than obvious that this assassination was going to happen. Reading before the page provided lets readers know that he was having bad dreams, and how he was waking up feeling sick. It never occurred to him or his mother that these were all bad signs of something terrible that was going to happen. I just found it ironic that, since Santiago's mother was someone who could decipher dreams, could not foreshadow the death of her own son, nor that Santiago did not feel the least bit strange that day.
