OPPapers.com

Barbarity Versus Civility

Barbarity versus Civility

In the scheme of life, civility can be learned through a number of factors, including certain upbringing taught at home, school, and influences from society. But these factors also work the same in dictating barbarity within people. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses literary elements and techniques to convey the theme that even the most civilized people resort to senseless, barbaric acts.
The usage of animal imagery in the novel describes the extent of how barbaric the people in a small town in Colombia can be. Victoria Guzman is the cook for the Nasar family. Victoria displays disdain toward Santiago Nasar. On the morning Santiago was murdered, Victoria was “disemboweling” a rabbit in the kitchen “…she remembered Santiago Nasar’s horror when she pulled out the insides of a rabbit by the roots and threw the steaming guts to the dogs.” Marquez uses foreshadowing to portray the nature of Santiago’s death to the reader. The effect of foreshadowing gives the reader a sense of symbolism using the words “rabbit” and “dogs”. The rabbit represents Santiago Nasar because he was wearing white linen the morning of his death and the dogs represent the Vicario brothers because of the barbaric, unmerciful nature of Santiago’s death. This can be inferred from the way Victoria is gutting this rabbit. The words “roots” and “steaming guts” point to the negative, barbaric event in this seemingly wealthy, civilized household.
Before the Vicario brothers killed Santiago Nasar, they went to Faustino Santos’s meat market to sharpen their knives; then they waited and spoke with the butcher. The butcher claimed that one of the Vicario brothers said “When you sacrifice a steer you don’t dare look into its eyes.” The Vicario brothers established a good reputation for themselves in the town as good hearted people, but this quote shows how heartless they could really be. Marquez conveys the idea that a “steer” is sacrificed...