Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a relatively small book, but it is open to countless interpretations regarding the overall purpose of the book. Here I will discuss two such interpretations: Isabel Alvarez-Borland's analysis sees the novella as asking why a senseless murder was allowed to occur; Carlos J. Alonso focuses on the fact that the text is a ritual means of redemption. Both analyzes are strongly argued and very conceivable, offering valuable insights into the text and developing meaningful interpretations. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay "From Mystery to Parody" by Isabel Alvarez-Borland, readings of Cronica de una muerte anunciada by Garcia Márquez, which asks why the city allowed the murder to happen when there was ample opportunity there to stop it. The analysis blames the city's hypocritical codes of honor for the death of Santiago Nasar and blames the citizens for their complicity. In this society women must remain virgins until marriage otherwise they are considered contaminated and damaged. Men, on the other hand, seem to do what they want without social repercussions. They also solicit whores before and even after marriage. For example, the narrator declares of Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, the town prostitute, “It was she who destroyed the virginity of my generation” (Garcia Márquez 74). Indeed, in this vision, the citizens' mentality is to blame. This social code is a blatant double standard, strictly censoring women's sexuality while men date and have promiscuous sex. In reality, Santiago is a real womanizer himself, going around "biting the bud of every wayward virgin that started showing up in those woods." The city is so entrenched in these antiquated beliefs that the Vicario brothers are ultimately acquitted of the murder. The court accepts the theory that the murder was a necessary defense of honor and after three years in prison they are free men. The murder plot is known to almost everyone because the Vicario brothers do not hide their plan. The town's knowledge of the murder plot is illustrated by the narrator's wry comment: "Never was there a death more foretold." Death is foretold to virtually everyone except Santiago himself. It seems absurd to think that the murder would be allowed to happen, or that Santiago would not be warned beforehand, with so much foreknowledge. Pablo and Pedro Vicario feel so strongly bound by their society's codes of honor that they kill a man. In fact, the reader gets the feeling that the Vicario brothers don't even want to kill Santiago; they simply do it because they feel obligated to do so. They believe that their family's honor can only be redeemed through the public murder of Santiago. They cannot back down because the code of honor binds them to a course of action. The amount of social pressure placed on the boys can be seen in Prudencia Cotes' startling statement: "I knew what they were doing and not only did I agree, I would never have married Pablo if he hadn't done what a man did." should do." The only way they can be stopped is by the people around them, but the citizens fail to prevent the murder. The city accepts and lives by this code of honor which allows the murder to regain respect By failing to stop the murder, each person was, to some extent, complicit in the crime. Alvarez-Borland's analysis goes on to state that the last two sections of the story can be seen as condemning the author. of thecitizens. In the penultimate section, the narrator describes the autopsy as a massacre, murder after murder. This, coupled with the macabre depiction of the actual murder “can then be seen as motivating the reader to realize, with the perpetrator implied, the terrible consequences of hypocritical codes of honor” (Alvarez-Borland 221). Furthermore, as the analysisoutside points out, the point of view changes from "I" to "we" in the fifth section, which "can be taken as further evidence of the author's condemnation of the narrator and the citizens, thus presenting a severe commentary on the corruption of their moral values ​​as well as their institutions". The book reveals the city as it is: ugly and dirty. In fact, after the crime that these antiquated honor codes led to occurs, the entire city seems to fall apart. Filled with a collective sense of guilt, the city changed forever, perhaps symbolized by Bayardo San Roman's house and car: "The house began to crumble. The wedding car was falling apart near the door, and eventually nothing remained except its weather-rotted carcass” (Garcia Marquez 100). Don Rogelio de la Flore dies from the shock of seeing how Santiago is murdered. Santiago's ex-finance woman, Flora Miguel, runs away with a lieutenant who then prostitutes her in a nearby town. Divina Flore, now overweight and faded, sits surrounded by her children from different fathers. Each person suffers a different fate, from death to madness to that of the narrator, but it seems certain that the city has paid the price for its sins. While Alvarez-Borland's analysis looks at Chronicle of a Death Foretold as a text that explores why Murder is Allowed to Happen, Carlos J. Alonso argues that the purpose of the narrative is to re-enact the murder as a attempt at redemption. In "Writing and Ritual in the Chronicle of a Death Foretold" he argues that the text is simply a means of recreating the crime, not of understanding or explaining it. The ritual reenactment of the crime "is an attempt to endow the crime with the prescribed ceremonial order, thus overcoming the centrifugal and fortuitous character of the original events" (Alonso 265). The citizens feel a tension that they try to ease by calling the events of the day fate. They constantly find themselves "trying to give order to the chain of many random events that have made the absurd possible, and it is obvious that they do so not out of the urgency of clarifying the mysteries but because none of them can continue to live without knowledge exact location and mission assigned to them by destiny" (Garcia Márquez 113). Calling it destiny makes it easier to accept that a murder occurred that could and should have been avoided. It serves to reduce the sense of guilt felt by the citizens. The story, Alonso argues, it is told simply because of the cathartic nature of the narrative. However, the very fact that the story is a ritual reenactment means it can never serve as a tool of redemption. With each reading and rereading of the story, the reader relives the murder. It is an endless cycle of violence that is never purified. In fact, Santiago is killed several times in the text. There is, of course, the grisly murder that appears at the end of the book, but Santiago Nasar also symbolically dies in his dreams. The night before his murder, for example, Santiago's dream contains the unfortunate omen of birds. His mother, who is an expert dream interpreter, curiously misunderstands her son's warning, something she will never forgive herself for. Victoria Guzman also symbolically kills Santiago in the kitchen while gutting rabbits, to Santiago's disgust, thus foreshadowing the, 1982.