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Chronicle Of A Death Foretold

Decent Essays

In Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the passage of time [...] Evaluating both the narrator’s desires to revisit the past and the foretold events leading up to Santiago’s murder, Chronicle of a Death Foretold explores the way the past and future impose upon present existence through the actions of the narrator and the written examples of Angela’s letters. The narrator continues to pursue the truth out of desire to secure the past. As the narrator begins the introductory description of the setting, he says that he “returned to this forgotten village, trying to put the broken mirror of memory back together from so many scattered shards” (Marquez 6). It is no surprise that the narrator chooses to describe the memories as a broken mirror because he is attempting to utilize contradictory and fragmented memories from his neighbor. However, the situation raises a rather suspicious question as to the way memory also reflects the person who is looking into the past. Therefore, the narrator’s glance into the past also indicates his own glance into the mirror, which reflects his own fascination with Santiago’s murder and the impact of time. …show more content…

Because the majority of the narrator’s present existence is based on linear experience, he discovers a conflict between human memory and time. Specifically, the narrator attempts to secure a fragment of the past from any alterations that time may make. The narrator describes that he “had a very confused memory of the festival before [he] decided to rescue it piece by piece from the memory of others” (##). The narrator is seeking to ‘rescue’ the knowledge that is being torn away from his memory and the memory of others. He acknowledges the way that the passage of time alters the meaning of an event simply by imposing the limitation of linear

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