The Chronicle of Death Foretold written by Gabriel Marquez, is a story filled with drama, honor, an interesting plot, and of course a death. The story’s roots back in a very conservative time in the 1950’s Columbia. Santiago Nasar is a hardworking man who took the lead of his Father’s ranch when he died. He is described to be rich, handsome, and has a love for guns. Everything suddenly changes when he is assassinated right in front of his home. There are several reasons for his death, but it is mostly due to the strict gender roles in the story. Gender roles are set of norms that Men and Women follow and there are certain things each gender must follow. For example, Men have to be strong and independent, while women need to know how to keep up a household. The gender roles that killed Santiago are women have to be virgins when they are married, the honor system of her brothers taking action and killing the man who took their sister’s virginity, and lastly, men are ranked higher than women are in this society.
In the story, the gap between Men and Women roles is huge. Women could only do a handful of things and were valued less than Men. "The brothers were brought up to be men. The girls were brought up to be married. They knew how to do screen embroidery, sew by machine, weave bone lace, wash and iron, make artificial flowers and fancy …show more content…
For example, the twins were only put in jail for three years after taking someone's life and in fact a possibly innocent man’s life. If killing someone only gets you three years in prison and not a life sentence then something is not right with that system. If the punishment were to be worse than a three year sentence, maybe the twins would not have committed the act and Santiago’s death could have been avoided. Men are just so revered that they can basically get away with anything or at least get a minor sentenced for