Apocalyptic Illusions: Finding Fate in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
by Larry Chen
The line between hapless tragedy and predetermined fate blurs in Márquez's novella. As readers, we are driven by the same need to understand the senseless violence that led to a death foretold. Yet, Márquez challenges our desire for order by employing an apocalyptic structure, offering the illusion of answers while hinting that the patterns we desperately seek might be nothing more than our desperate creation.
seek, or rather, create
“The apocalyptist seeks, or rather, creates, in the events and natural phenomena of the past and present to foretell the future. Similarly, the narrator of Santiago’s death finds –or creates– premonitory patterns everywhere” (Zamora 106).
behind the narrator’s journalistic facade
The narrator remarks that he “couldn’t bring [himself] to admit that life might end up resembling bad literature” and thought that “[the judge] never thought it legitimate that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature” (Márquez 88-89, 99).
narrator as the omniscent
The narrator “carefully disavows omniscience” and “refus[es] to acknowledge to himself or his readers his role as creator” (Zamora 108). He uses times, dates, and a journalistic guise to establish trust. His deeper intentions were to make sense of Santiago’s murder, which became his “place and mission … assigned by fate” (96).
The narrator uses the apocalyptic structure to impose patterns and meanings onto chaos, a believable way of linking events and creating a sense of inevitability.