Community, Responsibility, and Guilt
Essay 1: Community, Responsibility, and Guilt The novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells the story of Santiago Nasar’s death. More importantly it tells the story of what values and honor mean to a community and to what extent one can go to maintain that standard. A central theme in the novel is how a society can pressurize its people to act and behave in a certain way. They feel bound by a standard that if not kept, then it will bring shame to their family. In the novel, after her husband returns Angela Vicario to her family on their wedding night, she admits that it is Nasar that had taken her virginity. Her brothers, Pablo and Pedro, viscously murder Nasar to regain their sister’s and family’s honor. In this society a man or woman without honor is an outcast to the community and to the culture. Almost everyone in the community knew what was going to happen but no one did anything about it. Everyone in the community had excuses to why they did nothing to help. Excuses stating that they didn’t believe it would really happen or that they just didn’t know what to do. Each person seemed to just hope that someone else would do it; someone else would stop them, and didn’t want to take responsibility. The novel reflects how a community can victimize individuals within its society causing detrimental affects to both the general public and the specific individuals involved. The novel looks into the Latin American culture and how its cultural norms and the importance of honor effects the entire community. The principles that obligates the Vicario family and the community conducts the murder of a most likely innocent Santiago Nasar and burdens Pedro and Pablo with the duty to defend the family honor. In this culture, honor of a woman’s purity does not only belong to the female individually but the honor belongs to the family as well. To not be pure can bring shame on the family name in the eyes of the entire community. So much so that