Cultural beliefs are unique to regions, locations and populations in the world. In Latin America, where the story takes place, there are numerous cultural beliefs, traditions and rituals from the Catholic religion to the roles of the family in a household. Chronicle of a Death Foretold contains deeply rooted cultural belief of machismo that is crucial to the success of the novella because it becomes the foundation and the heart of the plot of the story. Out of all the characters in Chronicle of a Death Foretold the Vicario brothers are, without a doubt, the most prominent characters that embody and embellish the machismo culture due to numerous reasons.
Primarily, the Vicario brothers represent this machismo culture because they are the real men in the Vicario family. Their father doesn’t have the ability to work as a goldsmith or provide solid financial support for the family anymore as a result of going blind. Therefore, the brothers have to provide the stable income by operating a pig-slaughter house in the backyard. This indicates their manliness and masculinity because they are becoming the new men in the house.
In addition, Pedro and Pablo Vicario symbolize this antigual machismo culture after their sister, Angela, reveals to them that Santiago Nasar had raped her; it becomes their responsibility and duty as men of the house to restore their family’s honor by means of killing the perpetrator, Santiago Nasar. Gabriel Garcia Marquez dictates to the reader the ingrained belief of machismo in the Latin society through the Vicario brothers necessity to carry out the honor killing that the machismo culture calls for. So much so that even if the brothers don’t want to kill Santiago they still are obligated to for Pedro “put the knife in (Pablo’s) hand” and dragged him “off almost by force” in search of their sister’s lost honor (Marquez 230). The brothers must do the deed for they see “no way out of this” (230).
Furthermore, machismo culture in the Vicario twins becomes discernible in the preparations made to kill Santiago Nasar and in the actual murder scene. As they prepare for the honor killing, they pick two long pig knives from their slaughter house and go to the butcher shop to sharpen them. The visual imagery of the knives helps convey that they are going to follow through with the killing. Also, this is true for they openly tell all the people they pass on their preparations that they are “going to kill Santiago Nasar”. It also works against this idea because they are telling people so that someone could stop them from going through with the murder. This backfired though because “who the heck would ever think that the twins would kill anyone, much less with a pig knife” (234). It is this reason that makes the machismo culture responsible for the plot of the story. It possesses irony as the brothers try to avoid this task that the machismo culture requires of them; however, it utterly fails and it essentially leads to the death of Santiago Nasar being so foretold, hence the title of the book and significance of the story.
Works Cited: Chronicle of a Death Foretold Gabriel Garcia Marquez
