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- Chronicle of a Death Fortold, by Gabriel Marquez, is concerned with death in life and life in death.
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- It was rainy on the day of Santiago NasarÆs murder, and yet by the account of others, it
- was not. His death is so mingled with illusory images that everything seems mystified: much like
- death itself. The fact that the story is about how a death consumes the lives of the entire town as
- well as the victim, shows that it is concerned with death in life and asks us to evaluate our own
- views.
- Not only is the story concerned with death in life on the literary level, but the people of
- the town feel obliged to honor and offer gifts to a bishop that doesnÆt even like the town. It is
- perhaps because they fear if they do not keep their faith, they are putting in jeopardy their fate after
- death; this is the primary concern of all religions, life after death and fear of the unknown. "For
- years we couldnÆt talk about anything else. . .and it was obvious that we werenÆt doing it from an
- urge to clear up mysteries but because none of us could go on living without an exact knowledge of
- the place and the mission assigned to us by fate"(113).
- "æAll right, girl,Æ he said to her, trembling with rage, ætell us who it wasÆ. . .ÆSantiago
- Nasar,Æ she said"(53). Whether or not Santiago Nasar was the reason behind Angela VicarioÆs lost
- honor, his death shapes and defines her life afterwards. Many in the town describe her as being a
- woman half in mourning and the narrator is amazed at how she ends up understanding her own life
- despite how much she was made to die in life(101).
- Chronicle of a Death Fortold makes us look at life and death and face uncertainty about
- our future. Because it questions death and our belief in religion, it depreciates, in a sense, our
- strong belief in the glories of afterlife. Like the narrator, maybe we, "couldnÆt bring ouselves to
- admit that life might end up resembling bad literature so much"(102). It makes us think that we
- should be content now, and not later, and that the intermingling of life and death is not purely
- coincidental, but perhaps one is no greater than the other.
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