Cottonhill Diaries: January 2020

Wednesday, January 29, 2020

Book Review by Gouri C V, HA1

The Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“The Chronicle of a Death Foretold” is a
novel written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The theme of the novel is all around a death
that had been foretold. Santiago Nasar is
the protagonist and the story begins on the
morning of Santiago’s death. Marquez ends
it where Santiago had been killed in the
front door of his house.

The book keeps its novelty throughout.
The narrator ‘I’ describes the death in detail
and records the observations of other
characters as if they were reported to the
narrator. There it appears like an authentic
crime report. On the day of death santiago
wakes up with a strange dream and he woke up disturbed. The writer never
directly links it to the story although it gives
us a symbolic idea about Santiago’s future.
There are many characters who do not
seem to be relevant in the view of a crime
thriller. But all these characters recreate a Coloumbian town before the reader. The
partial Arab and Spanish identity of Nasar
creates a mixture of cultures similar to the
mixture of dream and reality in the novel.

The novel uses death to bring our
attention towards serious themes like the
role of religion in society. The story line
clearly depicts the ignorance of the society
towards the reality and a blind walk to
religion. At last when Santiago’s body was
subjected to post-mortum in his house,the murderers and the mother of the victim feel
the same smell, the smell of a mere carcass,
neither of an enemy nor of a son.
The author conveys great philosophies
of life through indirect symbols. And the try
has been fostered by employing magical
realism. The materialistic analysis of a death
with the aid of magic make this work
unique.