The Hidden Depths of García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The Hidden Depths of García Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Summary/Abstract: In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, an anonymous narrator examines the murder of a young man more than two decades after it had occurred. Although a judicial inquest determined that two brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, murdered Santiago Nasar in order to avenge their sister’s loss of virginity, the narrator intimates that the entire town, which remains nameless, was complicit in the crime. In murdering Santiago, the Vicario brothers appear to obey a collective will. Ostensibly a quest for truth and an attempt to decipher a recurring and eternal present, the narrative conveys a terrible self-knowledge through a tragicomic language of dreams. The narrator is imprisoned in circular communal thought patterns and the past adumbrates the future of a society in spiritual bondage. This essay explores the symbolic imagery of Crónica and the acts of concealment contained in its narrative.

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