Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Blog Post No. 3)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Genre: Crime Fiction

Number of pages read: 60/120

Summary: The wedding is still going on. The whole village is celebrating. Poncio Vicario, a blind member of the Vicario family, was placed to sit at an honored position in the middle of the party. People passed by him, wondering why he was sitting their. They talked to each other, but Pedro Vicario responded to questions that were not addressed to him. The Vicario brothers, Pablo and Pedro, were celebrating with Santiago Nasar. They were drinking together in a pub. Then, the Vicario brothers went back home to sleep, while Santiago Nasar staid. In the meantime, the couple departed for their honeymoon. The whole Vicario family was fast asleep. Somewhere around 11 o'clock PM, Pura Vicario, the mother, was woken up by three slow knocks. She opened door, but did not turn on the lights, so she does not wake up her family members. It was Bayardo San Roman. He came to return Angela Vicario to her family. Angela was crying. Her brother's then asked her the name. "Santiago Nasar" was her answer. The two drunkards took two knives from their pig pen. They went around the streets searching for Santiago Nasar. He was nowhere to be found. People they met along the way asked them why they are carrying such big knives. They always replied honestly - they were going to kill Santiago Nasar. Everyone thought it was drunkards talk, so nobody believed them. They camped in front of a milk store near their victim's house. A police officer confiscated their knives, so they had to go back home, get new ones and hide them in a newspaper. They waited there for hours and then Santiago went through his back door.

Reflection: The book is very interesting for me. I like all the action in the book. It gives me a break from all those Dickens' descriptions in the previous book I read. The shifting through timeline of the plot confuses me. I start reading about one time period and then it almost gets resolved, but then the book shifts back or forward in time. 

Passage:    " 'They were three very slow knocks', she told my mother, 'but they had that strange touch of bad news about them' "

I chose this quote because it describes it involves foreshadowing. It tells us that something important is going to happen, and it did. The story got twisted when Bayardo San Roman returned Angela Vicario home.