Animal imagery effect and Santiago Nasar's fate

In his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez has the impressive skill of characterizing and foreshadowing Santiago Nasar’s character and eventual death. Santiago Nasar’s murder by Pedro and Pablo Vicario was caused by an accusation that Nasar was possessing premarital relations with the Angela Vicario. Nevertheless, at that time Angela Vicario was engaged to Bayardo San Roman. When San Roman learns about the new news that Angela was never ever a virgin before they were engaged, San Roman was enraged and decided that he no longer wanted to marry her. This has brought on Angela Vicario’s brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, to program a murder for Nasar and all through the novel, Garcia Marquez utilizes motifs such as birds and pigs as animal imagery to foreshadow and characterize Santiago Nasar’s eventual death and character.

Garcia Marquez begins the novel with the morning on Nasar’s death. The morning of the day Santiago Nasar was murdered by Pablo and Pedro Vicario, Nasar had an odd dream. His dream involved birds. That morning, Santiago Nasar “dreamed he was going by way of a grove of timber trees exactly where a gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was content in his dream, but when he awoke he felt entirely spattered with bird shit” (three). Simply because there are several parallels that can be drawn from Nasar’s dream to Nasar’s life, the essence of his dream certainly resembles Nasar’s life story. Garcia Marquez uses symbolism and animal imagery when describing the eventful dream. The timber trees symbolized the townspeople who knew about the Pedro and Pablo Vicarios’ strategy, but had accomplished absolutely nothing to stop it, his short happiness points to his oblivious nature, and the bird excrement symbolizes his eventual death. His objective of these strategies are to foreshadow Santiago Nasar’s eventual demise. The events of his dream corresponded to the events that will happen in his life, consequently the animal imagery of the birds foreshadows the fate of Nasar.

The bird imagery continues all through the novel, as Garcia Marquez continues to describe Nasar soon after he spoke about Angela Vicario and her accusation that she and Nasar had premarital relations. He has described Nasar as “a sparrow hawk. He went about alone, just like his father, nipping the bud of any wayward virgin who began displaying up in those woods” (90). Nasar is being recognized for obtaining premarital relations with virgins. Garcia Marquez uses a metaphor of comparing Nasar to not only his father, but he is becoming compared to a hawk. A hawk is a bird predator that survives off of helpless prey. He utilizes this metaphor to characterize Nasar as the best Columbian machismo. He has the potential to do what he desires with girls since that is one of a machismo man’s function. Like a hawk, Nasar goes about and survives off of vulnerable prey. The prey is the females who Nasar had premarital relations with.

Furthermore, Garcia Marquez continues the animal imagery via another motif in the novel. Garcia Marquez utilised the motif of pigs when speaking about the Vicario brothers murdering Nasar. Garcia Marquez illustrates how the Vicario brothers gorily murdered Santiago Nasar for obtaining premarital relations with their sister, Angela Vicario. When Nasar is getting stabbed more than and over, “trying to finish it off as soon as and for all, Pedro Vicario sought his heart, but he looked for it in the armpit, where pigs have it” (118). Animal imagery is shown when Garcia Marquez describes that Santiago Nasar was killed the very same way that the Vicario brothers would have butchered a pig. Due to the fact Pedro Vicario sought Nasar’s heart in his armpit, Nasar is becoming compared to a pig that will become butchered. Garcia Marquez’s objective of the pig imagery is to characterize Santiago Nasar. This reveals how other townspeople have viewed Nasar right after they had heard that he had premarital relations with Angela Vicario. Nasar was dehumanized to an animal by the way he was murdered. When Pedro Vicario was hunting for Nasar’s heart in his armpit, Nasar was technically becoming treated as if he was going to be butchered like a pig. He is characterized with adverse attributes since his accused actions with Angela Vicario has gone against cultural norms in between males and females, exactly where premarital relationans are looked down upon. When being compared to a pig, Nasar is then being associated with unfavorable attributes that a pig would have. In the Colombian culture, pigs are usually linked with dirt and vulgarity.

Garcia Marquez utilizes animal imagery all through Chronicles of a Death Foretold in a lot of approaches and with many purposes, the most memorable of which is to indicate the ultimate fate of Santiago Nasar. The novel starts with Santiago Nasar’s dream. Nasar has an off dream that consisted of birds the day just before his death the objective of this was to foreshadow Nasar’s unfortunate fate. Then, the novel continues to describe and characterize Nasar making use of animal imagery. Nasar was known for being a sparrow hawk in the little town. The animal imagery of the the sparrow hawk, an additional kind of bird, is utilized to characterize Nasar and to provide how most of the village viewed him. Garcia Marquez then continues to use animal imagery to additional create Nasar’s character. Animal imagery is utilized when Garcia Marquez compares Nasar’s murder scene to butchering pigs. The objective of pig imagery is to characterize and produce a deeper understanding of Santiago Nasar.