Chronicle of a Death Foretold / G Garcia Marquez

Many of the stories we have read have the notion of reality—or, what is real—as a central question. In this story the concern expands to include also the idea of inevitability. Though vastly different in the details of its story and how that story plays out, there seems to me a resonance with Borges’ “Circular Ruins.”

Santiago Nasar is dead before dying; on the last page he “speaks” of himself (correctly) in the past tense. Fate and fatality seem constantly alternating, and the idea expressed so differently in “Circular Ruins” remains central: is man the agent of his fate, or the helpless pawn of that fate (perhaps not even existing, except as smoke to a fire, or memory to incident). Is fate emblematic of character or is character determined by fate. Further, with these remarkable descriptions of place that are quite alive in their own way, is environment (psychic and physical) the actual active force that no one can over-ride? The notion of complicity on the part of everyone in the town—even the victim’s unwitting mother—complicates and enriches the ideas of culpability and eventuality.

Santiago may also have already fulfilled the small portion of life that was his part to play, contributing to a larger, boundless mystery. He is not allowed to re-create his parents’ loveless marriage with Flora Miguel, as he would if he could—that cycle is broken. Everyone who contributed to his death also, in a magical sense, contributes to the amazing love-awakening of Bayardo and Angela. In the end the aged bride and groom have become fulfilled, or reconciled, and are re-untied in some mystical fashion that necessitated, or that at least includes, the murder of an man who was probably innocent of the crime for which he was killed though not innocent per se.