One of the most evident themes throughout Chronicle of a Death Foretold is failure of authority as well as the apathy of many of the townspeople. This was an existent problem that made many people in Colombia suffer, so Márquez decided to criticise and expose the leadership and their ways of controlling the town. Márquez depicts the mayor as being more interested in the domino games he was playing than in actually trying to stop the twins from committing a senseless and prejudiced crime that Santiago may not have been guilty of. ‘he promised to take care of it at once, but he went to check on a date for dominoes that night’ this quote reinforces the fact that the mayor is not doing his job and puts his leisure before anything else. Márquez is trying to perceive the leaders as careless people who don’t care about their town and only focus on things that will benefit them, like greeting other leaders, accentuating the fact that they are egocentric.
The priest, a religious leader, fails to keep his town in order as well as failing to provide essential guidance, is shown to be more interested in a visit from the bishop than in speaking and advising the twins and trying to stop the crime that is about to happen. These are several ways in which Márquez was able to show us what the leaders, both the religious leaders and the legal
…show more content…
People thought that Santiago did not look worried and was not scared, as well as people trying to ignore the situation and thinking it would go away at some point, some people did not believe what the Vicario twins told them, so they were going to do such as the colonel, the police officer, the priest and the bishop. “Those poor boys won’t kill anybody” “There’s no drunk in the world who’ll eat his own crap” People thought that the twins were only bluffing and can’t commit such a crime. They compared them to drunks, which shows how irrational the whole plan