Chronicle Of A Death Foretold Perpetrator Essay

In the novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the townspeople have come to a uniform decision that the “perpetrator”, the man who took Angela Vicario’s virginity, is not the man when she claims it is. Angela named the deceased Santiago Nasar as the man who deflowered her; however, after much thought the townspeople decided that Nasar was in fact not the real “perpetrator”: “The most current version…was that Angela Vicario was protecting someone who really loved her and she had chosen Santiago Nasar’s name because she thought her brothers would never dare go up against him” (Marquez 90). Throughout the story it Marquez seems to hint that the real “perpetrator” might be Angela’s cousin who just so happens to be the unnamed

This alternative motive is N’s guiltiness because he knows he was the one who slept with Angela, and yet she protected him and he did not say anything to save Santiago’s innocent soul. N selfishly let Santiago die because he knew that he, his family, and Angela would be criticized and put under much scrutiny if their secret was ever revealed. However, N feels a tremendous amount of guilt because his actions got someone killed, so he is writing this book and continuing the investigation of Santiago’s death: “my personal impression is that he died without understanding his death,”(Marquez 101). N he wants to give meaning and purpose to Santiago’s death, so that he can have a reason that will be able to comfort him through his life of guiltiness. N purposefully implemented himself as the narrator and the character of the story, so that it would be confusing to the “average” reader that the book was an attempt to confess his guiltiness. Following a Freudian approach N would be psycho analyzed through his subconscious mind, and we would find a deeper meaning to what drove N’s actions throughout the