Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Gabriel García Márquez

Colombian Origins: Born March 1928 in Aracataca, Colombia Bananas were sustaining crop, failed soon after birth, divided town Family couldn’t stay together, maternal grandparents took him in Lived a “colorful” life with them, aunts, and “ghosts” in the house Nickname: Gabito and Gabo

Early Years in Colombia Passion to be a writer early in life Age 19 went to Jesuit college to study law Abandoned law to work as a journalist (style), and later a fiction writer 1954 sent to Rome on assignment, began life living abroad (stories in different settings) Political critique in his writing First novella The Leaf Storm published 1955 Nobel Prize for Literature: 1982

Literary Influences: “One night a friend lent me a book of shot stories by Franz Kafka. I went back to the pension where I was staying and began to read The Metamorphosis. The first line almost knocked me off the bed…When I read that line I thought to myself that I didn’t know anyone was allowed to write things like that. If I had known, I would have started writing a long time ago” (The Paris Review). Franz Kafka William Faulkner Virginia Woolf Sophocles James Joyce Ernest Hemingway

Marquez’s “Reality”: “It always amuses me that the biggest praise for my work comes from the imagination, while the truth is that there’s not a single line in all my work that does not have a basis in reality. The problem is that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination” (The Paris Review).

Chronicle of a Death Foretold: Based on a true story, murder in 1951 in Sucre, Colombia Marquez began research on story soon after murder Upon mother’s request, waited until mother of murdered man’s death to write Published: 1981 Lawsuit followed (“real” Bayardo San Roman) in 1994, settled in 2011

Cover Art:

Guiding Questions/Themes: What complications arise in trying to recreate history in writing? Can we be truly objective? Can writing mimic reality? What is collective memory? Can it live in harmony with individual memory? How do emotions enhance or taint memory? Understanding others’ past helps us know more about ourselves and come to terms with realities in life. What is the effect of magical realism on a text? How are we shaped by the places we come from? How do we shape them? Can we create rational meaning in an irrational world? Do we have control over our destinies, or are our destinies foretold?

What power does tradition and cultural expectation have over our actions? Does honor trump morality? How do we assign guilt to bystanders? Who has power in society, and how do they obtain it? What do we sacrifice to maintain tradition/social expectation? Understanding others’ past helps us know more about ourselves and come to terms with realities in life. Often we approach the past with a set goal in mind, but through analysis and exploration new truths emerge. In our attempts to attach meaning to memory, we often alter it. Often we confuse reputation/assumption for evidence.

How does the image below connect with the quote? What does the image imply about the narrator’s goal? “I returned to this village, trying to put the broken mirror of memory back together from so many scattered shards”(6).

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