Chronicle of a Death Foretold

So many of the events described in Chronicle of a Death Foretold occur by chance. The unread letter in the door, the misinterpretation of Divina’s lies, the unloaded pistol, the bishop’s refusal to disembark from the boat, the second batch of knives, and many other chance occurrences mean that Santiago’s death was the product of strange twists of fate as much as a social failing.

When the magistrate tries to piece together these strange events, however, the narrator notes the frustrations he faces with The Reconstruction of Memory. Even the magistrate’s report is a victim of circumstance and fate; when the narrator seeks it out, it is only partially available and large parts of the text are damaged. Even the official version of events has been corrupted by unexpected circumstances. The magistrate’s report notes the “many coincidences” which led to such an unsatisfying narrative being created. In this respect, the novella itself stands as a metatextual testament to the magistrate’s conclusion.

The narrator recognizes that the event still lingers in people’s minds. Santiago’s death has never been properly explained or documented, even by the authorities. That he feels the need to return to the story such a long time later speaks to the fundamental unease which still lingers in his mind. Like so many people in the town, the death haunts the narrator. He feels guilty, he feels complicit, and he is desperate to know the truth. Due to the nature of the murder—and the nature of life itself—he may never be able to discover a single, objective explanation of what happened on the day his friend was killed.

The end result of the narrator’s story is not to create an explanation of Santiago’s death but to explore The Complicity of the Crowd amongst the townspeople. The main thread which is woven throughout the story, both in the past and the future, is the failure of other people to warn Santiago of what was about to happen. People either deliberately withheld the truth, tried and failed to warn him, or simply assumed that someone else would tell him. The narrator is not able to find a single person—other than Nahir Miguel—who explicitly tells Santiago that he is about to be killed. By the time Nahir tells Santiago, the twins are already waiting outside.

In this respect, the focus of the story broadens beyond the scope of just the main protagonists. The roles of Santiago, the twins, and Angela fade into the background as the narrator explores why the entire town needs to bear some responsibility for Santiago’s death. The legal exactitudes of the murder will not and cannot be explained; simply too much time has passed, and memory is too subjective a tool to be relied upon. Instead, the narrative suggests that the entire town is complicit in their failure. Not only did they not warn Santiago, but the values they held—such as patriarchal views of the role of women and the importance of Honor and Violence—led to a tragic murder which could have been avoided.

The story ends with the vivid description of Santiago’s murder. The first sentence of the novella announces Santiago’s death to the audience. The time of the death is announced, and the rest of the story explores the periods before and after the murder. As such, the narrative frames the murder in the same way that it was seen by many of the townspeople: inevitable. The threat of violence has lingered throughout the novel, from the twins sharpening their knives to the unloaded gun on the nightstand to the animals being slaughtered and prepared in the kitchens. In the final pages, however, Santiago’s death is described in minute detail. Each stab wound, each fatal blow, and even the evacuation of Santiago’s intestines on to the ground is recalled by the narrator, a friend of Santiago. The vivid description of the murder is an important reminder of the cost of inaction: Santiago is brutally punished for the failings of others. No evidence of his alleged crimes is presented, and the entire town gathers to watch his murder.

The trauma of the scene is so much that the narrator and the other townspeople cannot abandon the matter even many years later. The vivid nature of the descriptions is one of the only passages of the story which seem to be completely agreed upon—there is no dissenting version of events because the murder of Santiago is burned so explicitly into the minds of the crowd. They remember this; they are never able to forget this. The murder of Santiago creates a focal point in the collective memory of the town. For many years later, they will talk about this as an attempt to navigate the traumatic failures of their social collective.