Masculinity In Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

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Obtaining and defending one's honor defines a person's life the community conveyed in Gabriel García Marquez’s novela Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Honor is an intangible prize that is synonymous with worship and good reputation. In the small town that this chronicle takes place in is very divided through gender. For a woman to be respected highly and maintain her honor she must be pure and practice chastity before marriage. Opposed to that, for a man to be considered with honor, he perform hyper-masculinity in everything that he does, and treat everyone with this pugnacious attitude. The characters in the novela gain back their honor after the events of this crazy weekend, except for one, “ For the immense majority of people there was only one victim: Bayardo San Román. …show more content…

Bayardo San Roman is an immortal hunk of a man in his youth. Magdalena Oliver describes his appearance on the boat, “He looked like a fairy”(26). The narrator’s mother also remarks on Bayardo and says about his economic situation, “It also seems that he’s swimming in gold.” Bayardo maintains his honor through his youth, and through his mystical and mysterious appearance. Bayardo arrives in the village as an eligible bachelor, who seems to the townspeople that he has more money than god. When trying to woo Angela vicario over they go to charity bazaar, and Angela is astonished at was Bayardo did for her, “ She couldn’t