Foretold Animal Imagery

How is Animal Imagery used in Chronicle of a Death Foretold?

Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novel based on true events that had occurred in 1951 in Colombia. As the title indicates, the author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez creates a timeline of how one citizen, Santiago Nazar was murdered. Unlike the norms of a detective themed novel, the audience is aware from the start of the victim, the killers and the reasons. However Marquez, with translation by Gregory Rabassa, focuses on exploring the behavior of the community around him. Despite having a journalistic approach to the novel, Marquez uses animal imagery to create a setting, describe the characters and foreshadow the course of events. The setting takes place in a Hispanic country where honour

The imagery of a pig had been a consisted comparison to Santiago throughout the novel. “Until he was carved up like a pig” (2). This simile had been stated at the start of the novel, allowing for the reader to pay attention to his pig-like traits. Pigs in general are viewed as unpleasant, muddy and low class animals. This can be connected to Santiago’s persona as the author makes implications of him potentially raping Divina Flor. “Pedro Vicario sought his heart …in the armpit, where pigs have it.”(120) This quote brings the metaphor of a pig to a full circle, as the original simile becomes the actual course of events when Santiago is murdered with a pig’s knife. This also reflects on the dehumanized nature of the two brothers, who don’t demonstrate a different attitude towards killing a person or a pig. And this way, the image of a pig contributes to building up characters. Additionally, Marquez foreshadows a relation between Angela and Santiago, through “Our daughters would be married in a pigpen” (40), in reference to Angela’s wedding. Having a wedding in a dirty and impure environment foreshadows a disaster. Marquez consistently uses the language that implies Santiago’s innocence, however this quote makes the reader question this theory. Throughout the novel, Santiago is metaphorically linked to a pig, hence ‘pigpen’, could refer to Santiago’s potential involvement in the soon to be failed

Rather than focusing on the typical conflicts of a detective novels, such as whom and why, he focused on comparing the nature of people in the community at the time, to the nature of animals. He also uses animal imagery in order to foreshadow the course of events, such as the way in which Santiago would be killed, the betrayal of the community and the reason, which was his sexual attraction with women. However, although the novel is focused on comparing characters to animals, he does make one statement which creates a large differentiation between the two. “No matter how much I scrubbed with soap and rags I couldn’t get rid of the smell” (79). Here an important human trait becomes visible, and it is the trait of guilt. When killing rabbits or other animals in the novel, Marquez has never made an emphasis on the smell, but he does this time, to remind the reader of Santiago’s and the Vicario Brother’s