Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Research Paper

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Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis both place the protagonist in opposition to a prevailing family structure. At the same time, the family structure dictates personal identity, character traits, worldviews, and reactions to events. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold and in The Metamorphosis, personal identities are malleable and yet the changes that occur take place within a confining social structure at which family resides at the core. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Santiago Nasar is the death referred to in the title. Like Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis, Nasar has been unfairly stigmatized but neither receives help from his family. In fact, the family is presented as a source -- or at least an enhancer of -- suffering. Nasar in Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Samsa in The Metamorphisis share a common fate. They are isolated, ostracized, and stigmatized. They endure alienation and isolation that creates angst and a premature confrontation with mortality. Angela Vicario is the protagonist in Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in spite of the fact that the plot is driven more intensely by the passive nature of Nasar. Vicario is also a product of her family, and she is even less capable of self-determination because of the way family roles and ties define her character. Therefore, the central characters in both Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Kafka's Metamorphosis suffer alienation and isolation as a result of poorly defined boundaries between self and family.

Angela Vicario in Chronicle of a Death Foretold lives largely in a fantasy world, which is similar to the way Gregor Samsa lives as if in a fantasy world in "The Metamorphosis." Both of their fantasy worlds are created in opposition to, or because of, their dysfunctional family structures and relationships. Vicario's senseless narcissism even leads to what is likely the death of an innocent man, Santiago Nasar. Even if Nasar is "guilty" of deflowering the virgin, Vicario assumes a cold-hearted stance toward the man. It is as if she is seeking vicarious revenge upon him or through all of mankind.

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Moreover, Vicario wields her sexual power over Nasar's life and over the life of her husband Bayardo San Roman. Although she has nothing to gain from the persecution of Nasar with the possible exception of preserving her reputation in her brothers' eyes, Vicario she enables the suffering of Nasar. In this same way, Samsa's sister does not go out of her way to help Gregor, instead allowing him to suffer in spite of their family ties. The difference is that with Angela Vicario, she persecutes and stigmatizes Nasar in order to please her two brothers; whereas the persecution and stigmatization of Samsa is achieved as a result of groupthink among the rest of the family. Groupthink is an extension of family acculturation in both Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Kafka's "Metamorphisis."

Vicario "was the prettiest" of her four sisters, claims the narrator (Marquez p. 32). She is therefore defined specifically in comparison with her sisters and only based on her looks. Gregor Samsa's looks also define his character in "The Metamorphosis." As he changed into a hideous unsightly creature, Gregor Samsa can no longer face his family. Their judgment of and reaction to Gregor is based on their revulsion, which shows that their love for him was conditional on his appearance. Angela Vicaro's appearance also determines others' reactions to her. If she were not attractive, she would not have been the perceived object of a deflowering. Moreover, Angela Vicario milks her attractiveness because she knows it provides her with sexually-derived power over men.

Angela's physical beauty is not matched by her inner beauty. Angela "had a helpless air and a poverty of spirit that augured an uncertain future for her," (p. 32). She is therefore much the opposite of Gregor Samsa. For Samsa, his external ugliness does not match up with who….....

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