run ons and [fragments]

5/45 Chronicle of a Death Foretold Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Read somewhere that one of the many themes of this novella is the subjection of women. However, I found myself looking at Angela Vicario as the antagonist rather than the victim.

It was her who killed Santiago Nasar. And in a manner so unlikely: through bloodying her brothers’ hands instead of her own; slaughtered like one of her brothers’ pigs. She was unapologetic, as she sat under a caged canary by the window like an apparition, half-mourning for her lost lover rather than for having an innocent man butchered and for clouding the entire town with a mantle of gratuitous guilt.

Most of all, she held the power over the truth. I doubt whether GGM himself knew who took Angela Vicario’s virginity. She must’ve taken the truth with her to her grave (along with her hair yellowed with age); I can vividly imagine it rotting with her carcass. A better image than that of Santiago Nasar being massacred in front of the masses like the main act on a town fiesta.

A goddamned good novella, as expected. And here I am, at a loss for anything other than utter disgust for Angela Vicario. 

P.S. What I find so satisfying is that I can write about this without fear of spoiling it for others. After all, there is no death so clearly foretold. He dies in the beginning. He dies in the end. What is there to spoil?


The verdict: 8/10


01-19-12 I take it back. It's the entire town who killed Santiago Nasar. With the exception of the narrator (who was carousing with Maria Alejandrina Cervantes the entire time), Maria Alejandrina Cervantes (who was carousing with the narrator the entire time), Cristo Bedoya (who did everything he could to warn Santiago Nasar), Margot and Luisa Santiaga (who both found out far too late). There.