Apocalyptic Illusion: Finding Fate in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

The line between hapless tragedy and a predetermined fate seems impossibly thin. We desire order in a chaotic world and try to construct narratives that give us control over unpredictable events. If our fate is predetermined, it paradoxically contradicts our primordial drive for control. Still, much like everything in our universe, it implies there must be at least a pattern or a predetermined path so we can foretell our ending. In “Ends and Endings in Garcia Márquez’s Cronica de Una Muerte Anunciada [Chronicle of a Death Foretold]” by Lois Parkinson Zamora, we grapple with the question of “the end,” which seems to be nonexistent in Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold, which is apocalyptic in nature. Márquez’s writing demonstrates a cyclical pattern where death precedes rebirth, reflecting an apocalyptic paradigm. In the broader literary sense, an apocalyptic story focuses on catastrophic events and the struggle for truth and grapples with endings. It involves the key elements of a cyclical nature, inevitability, revelations, dualism, and a search for meaning. I will broaden this idea with the proposition that the apocalyptic framework in Chronicle of a Death Foretold creates an illusion of predetermined fate. However, upon closer examination, it imposes patterns and meanings onto chaos, which hides the narrator's true intentions of proving the existence of fate. 

Despite the foretold ending of the novel, we hope that, against all odds, something will forestall Santiago’s death. The structure of the narration is cyclical, and the apocalyptic nature of the narration strengthens the eventual fate and murder of Santiago as we read repeated tellings of the murder. After each time, the details become more grotesque until the book's conclusion, where it reaches a climax at the finale when Santiago holds “his hanging intestines in his hands” (Márquez 119). Suspense continuously mounts as Márquez exploits the basic fact that death is guaranteed for everyone, thus making the reader “recognize in his story the moral weight of our own individual identity” (Zamora 106). Throughout the book, besides the townspeople and announcements made by the murderers, even the natural order seems to announce Santiago’s death. Clotilde Armenta described him as looking “like a ghost,” and the “ominous augury in … [Santiago’s] two dreams already show an emerging pattern. In “Ends and Endings,” Zamora writes, “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). I agree with this sentiment; those concerned with the end of time do not simply wait for the ending. They look for clues and omens in everything around them. They interpret everything as a sign, predetermined, often cataclysmic. The narrator of Chronicle acts similarly; he does not just recount facts but searches for meaning within the events leading up to it. The crucial part of the sentence is “or rather, creates.” It suggests two possibilities: one implies hidden forces and a lack of free will through a pattern, or the narrator imposes patterns and creates connections where there might be none. This question becomes further amplified when Márquez describes memory as a “broken mirror [of] scattered shards,” and we must decide whether or not to walk on these shards to find a resolution (Márquez 5). Nevertheless, the apocalyptic paradigm makes death seem less like a random occurrence and more like destiny written into the fabric of the world, as it provides foreshadowing and omens before the event. Furthermore, the paradigm turns everything into a rhythm, including death, and reinforces that it was always intended to happen. 

The narrator, who never truly understands the reason for Santiago’s death, tries to play the apocalyptist. An impartial reporter acts as the medium between the reader and his story. He employs time to remind the reader of his role as the chronicler and builds trust by revealing a minute-by-minute timeline leading up to Santiago’s death. He acts as if communicating the time would show the cause. However, the narrator “carefully disavows omniscience” and “refus[es] to acknowledge to himself or his readers his role as creator” (Zamora 108). The narrator’s obsessive investigation shows his desire to uncover fate. The narrator says he “could not live without an exact knowledge of the place and the mission assigned to us by fate” (96). The narrator's desire and denial of his role draw the readers in and encourage us to seek patterns of fate where there might be none. Furthermore, the author uses direct quotations to minimize the control he has ostensibly. His silence leads to more questions about the narrator's core belief and whether or not he truly believes in what he is presenting. This desire for a conclusion links to the apocalyptic narration, which emphasizes that everything has an end: stories, societies, and perhaps the world itself. The narration style also suggests that fate guides individuals towards an inevitable conclusion, and the story offers a reason for making sense of change and loss in the chaos of nature. Through the vast amounts of research conducted by the narrator, it is clear that the novel has become “the place and mission” of the narrator, for a written account, might be the only thing that could explain Santiago’s meaningless death. Likewise, 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). The narrator expresses disbelief that such tragedy could align to bring about a tragic outcome and that life should not operate like a poorly written story. The narrator’s expression reinforces his frustration with the randomness of Santiago’s death. The narrator thus uses an apocalyptic structure to find more believable ways to link events and create a sense of inevitability. The narrator’s voice sounds like a genuine chronicler, but beneath the facade is a person so perplexed with the probabilities of an event that drives him to write the chronicle.

We all seek for order amid chaos. Even we, the readers, are inclined to search for meaning in Santiago’s death. It is hard for us to understand the irrational, and it would make “sense” for there to be a justification for senseless violence. Although the apocalyptical structure promises a conclusion, it offers false certainty that unravels as the narrator shares more of his personal beliefs. The struggle to understand Santiago’s death mirrors our attempts to grapple with senseless tragedies and injustices in the real world. Márquez offers the hope that it does not matter whether or not the future is fated; we still can create meaning out of fate. Even in the solace in the beauty and absurdity of life, even in the face of our mortality and the inevitability of death, we should not be driven into madness by chaos.

Citations

García Márquez, Gabriel, 1927-2014. Chronicle of a Death Foretold: a Novel. New York: Vintage International, 2003.

Zamora, Lois Parkinson. “Ends and Endings in Garcia Marquez’s ‘Cronica de Una Muerte Anunciada’ (‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’).” Latin American Literary Review, vol. 13, no. 25, 1985, pp. 104–16. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/20119390. Accessed 1 Mar. 2024.