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Chronicle Of A Death Foretold By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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The novella Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a journalistic account of a historical murder, is written by author Gabriel García Márquez. Continually through his career “Garcia Marquez employs journalistic writing techniques in his fiction, and particularly in Chronicle of a Death Foretold in order to produce a seemingly more authentic and credible work”( Gardener 3-4). This particular novel reads as if it is fictional. However, readers are interested to know that the account is based on a factual event. It is based on an event involving some of the authors closest friends thirty years before the novel’s date of publication. It is believed to be “A perfect integration of literature and journalism”(Gardener 1). Marquez tells readers he uses …show more content…

The novel’s “precise detailing of the time of each event and the matter-of-fact usage of language” helps to bring this style to life (Pelayo 116). The technique of ‘Chronicling’ is presented from the very beginning when the novella states, "On the day they were going to kill him, Santiago Nasar got up at five-thirty in the morning to wait for the boat the bishop was coming on” (Marquez 169). This type of exact factual evidence allows readers to be pulled back into reality. It also leaves the ‘why’ of Santiago Nasar’s death and the “social milieu that despises the murder” to be left unclear to readers (Aghaei 13). This is a part of the style of “prolepsis” which entails the narration of an event before an earlier event takes place. This helps the author to keep the reader in suspense of how it happens. In this specific novel readers “follow the story step-by-step through the successive events” (Aghaei 13). Additionally, the narrator’s lack of personal commentary keeps the novella to appear objective, accurate, and neutral. This technique is used in real world journalism by reporters and journalists worldwide. Garcia Marquez expresses his views on the presentation of facts by stating “‘The key is to tell it straight’”(Gardener 13).

The novella as a whole is written in a pseudo journalistic style. This means that the story is told through a series of flashbacks and interviews used to help describe and support the events taking place. This style

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