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Author Overview
Gabriel Garcia Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, in 1928, the eldest of sixteen children. After graduating from the University of Bogota, he worked as a reporter for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador and as a foreign correspondent in Rome, Paris, Barcelona, Caracas, and New York. His most famous work, One Hundred Years of Solitude, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
 Chronicle of a Death Foretold occupies a unique place among Marquez's works because the narrative is both journalistic and fictitious. Garcia frequently uses journalistic techniques in his fiction. For example, in most of his novels he creates a high level of interest in the very first line of the text, and employs many journalistic details based on close observation throughout the entire novel. Marquez himself said that he became a good journalist by reading literature, and that journalism in turn helped him maintain contact with reality, which he considers essential to writing good literature.
 In the 1920s and 1930s, the Latin-American novel did little besides realistically portray of regional or national life and customs. In terms of narrative technique, this fiction functioned within the realist tradition of the nineteenth century. In the late 1940s, Latin-American novels changed, as they had been influenced by the modernist novels of Woolf, Joyce, and Faulkner. Such modernist novelists were well-known among Latin American intellectuals by the 1930s.
 Along with contemporaries such as the Cuban Alejo Carpentier, the Guatemalan Miguel Angel Asturias, the Mexican Agustin Yanez, and the Argentine Leopoldo Marechal, Gabriel Garcia Márquez contributed novels that insisted on the right of invention. The books were concerned with the construction of new realities, not the reflection of existing themes. One technique that came into being in this fiction is magic realism, which is the incorporation of fantastic or mythical elements matter-of-factly into otherwise realistic fiction. Alejo Carpentier was the first to use the term when he recognized the tendency of his region's authors to illustrate the mundane by means of the extraordinary.
 Colombia prides itself on being a stronghold of Spanish tradition. Gabriel Garcia Marquez became part of a coastal group that wanted to leave Bogota and the conservative attitudes prevalent in much of Colombia. Coastal towns like Barranquilla were more supportive of innovative and imaginative literature. Marquez and his contemporaries involved in this coastal movement were called the "Group of Barranquilla." Marquez's first novel, Leafstorm, strongly reflects Faulkner's influence in its structure and narrative point of view. In the 1940s, Marquez read and learned from Faulkner's novels. Marquez, who was originally planning to study law after graduating from university, said that when he first read Faulkner, he knew he had to become a writer.
 Chronicle of a Death Foretold showcases Marquez's skills as a journalist rather than as a novelist. After the publication of the novel, journalists poured into Sucre, the town where the real murder that inspired the book took place, in order to interview the surviving characters. In a strange twist, real life replicated the novel—the novel tells the story of a the narrator's return to the Colombian town to resolve the details of a murder twenty years after it had taken place.


Santiago Nasar - - The protagonist of the story. [He is believed to have deflowered Angela by the Vicario brothers.]  He is killed the day after Angela Vicario's wedding.

Angela Vicario - The dishonored bride. She becomes a seamstress after being returned home on her wedding night. She was very beautiful in her youth.

Pedro Vicario - The more serious of the two twins. It is his idea to kill Santiago Nasar. He spent time in the army, and after being released from prison he joins the army once again.

Pablo Vicario - He is the twin who insists that the twins go through with the crime. He is betrothed to Prudencia Cotes, who he marries when he is released from jail.

Bayardo San Roman - The man who marries Angela Vicario. He comes from a wealthy and prestigious family. When he arrives in town, he is described as having a slim waist and golden eyes.

Purisima del Carmen - The mother of Angela Vicario. When her daughter is brought home by Bayardo San Roman, after he discovers she is not a virgin, Purisima beats her daughter; she is a strict mother.

Poncio Vicario - He is Angela's father. He used to work as a goldsmith until the strain of the profession made him go blind. He dies shortly after his twin sons are sent to prison.

Placida Linero - Santiago's mother. She has a well-earned reputation as an interpreter of dreams. She never forgives herself for misinterpreting the dream about trees and birds that her son had the night before his death.

Maria Alejandrina Cervantes - An elegant whore with eyes like an "insomniac leopard." She eats excessively to mourn Santiago Nasar's death.

Prudencia Cotes - Pablo Vicario's finance. She says she would not have married Pablo if he had not upheld the honor of his sister by killing the man who took her virginity.

Ibrahim Nasar - Santiago's father, an Arab. He seduced Victoria Guzman when she was a teenager. He taught his son the art of falconry and his love of firearms.

Victoria Guzman - The Nasars' cook. She violently guts rabbits on the morning of the murder. She had an affair with Ibrahim Nasar when she was a teenager.

Clothilde Armenta - The proprietress of the milk shop where the Vicarios wait to kill Santiago. She is an insightful woman, and can tell that the Vicario twins are tired and are killing Santiago only out of obligation.

Don Rogelio de la Flor - Clothilde Armenta's husband. He doesn't listen to her when she warns him about the Vicario twins' plan. He dies of shock at age eighty-six when he sees the brutal way that the Vicarios murder Santiago.

Divina Flor - Victoria Guzman's daughter. Santiago desires her sexually, but Victoria watches carefully to make sure he does not do anything to her.

Margot - The narrator's sister. She feels that Santiago Nasar would be a good catch for any girl, since he is young, handsome, and wealthy.

[The Sister who is a nun - The narrator's other sister who dances the meringue during the wedding.]

Cristo Bedoya - A friend of the narrator's and of Santiago Nasar. He runs all over town at the end of the book trying to warn Santiago of the Vicario's plan.

Luis Enrique - The narrator's younger brother. He plays the guitar very well, and goes around with Santiago, Cristo, and the narrator when they go to serenade Bayardo and Angela on the night of their wedding.

Father Amador - The local priest, who forgets to warn Santiago Nasar about the plot against him.

Colonel Lazaro Aponte - The lazy Colonel who fails to prevent Santiago's murder because he is checking on his game of dominoes.

Faustino Santos - The local butcher who alerts a local police officer that the Vicario brothers are talking about murdering Santiago.

General Petronio San Roman and Alberta Simonds - Bayardo San Roman's parents. Alberta Simonds used to be extremely beautiful; General Petronio San Roman and she drive up in a model T Ford. The General is impressively bedecked with war medals.

Yamil Shaium - An Arab man who warns Cristo Bedoya about the Viacrio twins' plan to murder Santiago. He and Santiago have an Arabic play on words that they exchange whenever they meet.

Flora Miguel - The pretty, but uninteresting woman that Santiago Nasar was betrothed to marry.

Nahir Miguel - The father of Flora Miguel. He is the one who warns Santiago that the Vicario brothers are waiting to kill him.

Xius - A widower who owned the most beautiful house; he died of sadness because he sold it; the house held all of his dead wife's possessions.

Mercedes Barcha - The narrator's eventual wife (and the name of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's real wife). The narrator proposes to her at Angela and Bayardo's wddiing party.


Themes
Ritual - Manifestations of love in Chronicle of a Death Foretold are ritualistic, and the novel itself is a ritual which re-enacts Santiago Nasar's death. When Bayardo San Roman first comes to town, he decides to marry Angela Vicario, whom he has never met. His courtship of Angela demonstrates the rituals of Latin American marriage culture. He brings her a gift of a music box inlaid with mother-of-pearl for her birthday, and obtains everything his future bride asks for. The purpose of this courtship ritual is not to cause the lovers to fall deeper in love but rather to demonstrate the man's affluence and power. Personality does not determine worthiness; rather, their family and wealth do.
 Angela Vicario's obsessive letter writing is another example of ritual. Angela does not care what she says in her letters; she is more concerned with the fact that Bayardo is receiving them. The ritual of writing brings her happiness. Similarly, Bayardo San Roman does not read her letters, but receiving two thousand letters over the course of seventeen years gives him the certainty that she is serious in her desire for him to return to her.
 The novel's style is itself a ritual repetition of the events surrounding a crime. It does not follow a traditional narrative arc, but rather is told for the cathartic value of the act of telling. The only thing we gain from reading the story is the same limited knowledge of the occurrence that is available to the narrator. In this sense, the novel can be seen as a mere ritual of investigation as an end in itself with no other results or discoveries.

Honor - In the culture of the Colombian town in which the narrative takes place, honor is taken very seriously. Nobody in the novel ever questions any action that is taken to preserve someone's honor, since it is commonly believed to be a fundamental moral trait that is vital to keep intact. A person without honor is an outcast in the community.
 All of the characters in the novel are influenced by this powerful construction of honor. The defense of this ideal is directly responsible for Santiago Nasar's murder. The Vicario brothers kill Santiago in order to restore the honor of their sister. She dishonors her family by marrying another man when she had already slept with someone else. In order for this wrong to be righted, her brothers must kill Santiago, the man who supposedly took her virginity, in order to clear her name. Though a few people in the community, like Clothilde Armenta and Yamil Shaium, try to prevent the death from occurring, most people turned the other cheek, because they believed that the severity of the crime deserved a cruel punishment. The fact that death was considered a reasonable retribution for the crime of taking a girl's virginity indicates how awful it was to sleep with an unmarried woman; doing so ruined her chances of marrying well, and marriage was women's one way to advance in the world.