Aibhi Biswas

M.A English (Final)

4 November 2013

Two need to play this game: ambiguity in Marquez’s the chronicle of a death foretold

The chronicle of a death foretold is an ambiguous novella in terms of genre, narration, resolution, aim and in terms of giving agency and power to the reader/ author.
The novella can be seen as a parody, a suspense thriller and a detective novel of journalistic trend. The death is the central event but there’s no mystery regarding it rather completely different questions are raised.
The aim of this paper is to show that the narrator is distinct from the author but sometimes they intersect. Thus Ronald Barthes statement that the author is dead is not completely true. The authors’ present but it’s not an omnipotent presence, controlling the universal subject (the reader). But this does make the reader all powerful. Barthes implies in his essay Death of the Author. The reader follows the patterns presented by the author but the final impression, overall opinion of the text and the reader’s reaction are not prefigured or controlled by the author. Thus the author and the reader together form the overall value of the text. Raymond Williams explains the formation of the category of Literature, its ever expanding and changing parameters\paradigms are explained in his essay Marxism and Literature. This paper will show the growing value of Latin American Literature, becoming a part of the literary canon, valued as a skillful piece of art. This novella is one of the hallmarks of the Latin American Literature, yet not falling into any one particular generic category, fulfilling all generic expectations simultaneously breaking\contradicting its rules. This resulted in expanding and extending the already diverse responses, the readers have to this novella. I will remind all that all authors are also readers, their works is an accumulation of the various responses they had to various authors’ works. Literature is a process in which both the reader and the author play an equally important role.

AMALGAMATION OF GENRES: AMBIGOUS FORM

Crime fictions have a perfectly planned murder, a smartly conceived killing, efficiently executed with no trace of the perpetrator but this novella is the exact opposite, a detailed description of a poorly planned murder in a post- modern fiction. Santiago Nasar is murdered as he was accused by the returned bride Angela Vicario of robbing her of her virginity. Nasar may not be the guilty as no evidence supports Angela’s accusation. But her brothers immediately set out to kill him.
Like a mystery novel the text has an investigator, narrator who may or may not be the author. The narrator tries to reconstruct past events after twenty seven years using the interviews of witnesses, participants, his own hazy memories and the official report. The murder takes place in the final sentence of the novel but it’s not a plot spoiler, the death is foretold in the opening of the novel but the act is precisely narrated and the suspense kills itself says Ted Gioia. The reader encounters endless obstacles, lapses and bad judgments.

The Journalistic Trend And The Detective Novel

The narrative is journalistic and fictitious. Journalistic details are used, like close observation, interviews, research, and a pseudo journalistic reconstruction. It’s a detective story where the narrator tries to find out what exactly happened to Santiago during the celebration and how his murder came about. It has all the aspects of detective novel like red herrings, deliberate mis- information and a conscious desire by all concerned of not revealing the truth. Yet it lacks a kind of authorial certainties linked to a detective genre as the readers are given unreliable evidence. The anonymous narrator who clearly supports Santiago’s innocence can’t be trusted. Jill Waters’s points that the story revolves around the difficulties of reconstructing the past in the present as facts can’t be proved and the people’s memories are unreliable, no hard evidence.
There is first person narration throughout, the narrator like a detective explores ideas and comments like a journalist but uses unreliable information, facts are presented but does not clarify if Santiago was truly guilty rather leads the reader to assume certain events.
The novella can be read as a Kafkaesque love and crime story. The beginning of the book is a variation of the start of the trial and the metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Marquez acknowledges this influence. In metamorphosis Kafka uses the third person omniscient narration. In chronicle of a death foretold the narrator tells the story in first person as a witness to the events yet recounting the tale later from an omniscient point of view, sharing all the characters thoughts, using back memory and irony. Thus is unreliable, doubtful and biased as believes in Santiago’s innocence, gives his own point of views but does not really know what the other characters are thinking. The text follows the Aristotelian unites of action, place and time as the cultural plot unfolds during the course of few hours, a departure from the form. Yet like classical tragedy in which a pre-ordained destiny plays out. The force of fate and destiny is a popular theme in Latin American fiction about human incompetence. Structurally the novella is divided into five parts, opens almost at the end of the action (death of Santiago) linked to detective novels and Greek tragedy. The structure invites readers to explore with the narrator something that’s unclear. Readers already know the events so questions the whole structure, the fictional creation and the whole creative process clarifies Gioia. It works like an inverted detective story; the narrative focuses on the unraveling of the circumstances surrounding the killing and its effects on the townspeople. Amanda Martinez observes that the novels style is like a ritual repetition of the events surrounding the crime, told for a cathartic value of the act of telling. The only thing gained from its reading is the limited knowledge the narrator has, its true value seen when the readers decipher the details presented by the author and then only the true story can be discussed.

Magical Realism A Latin American Invention

The novella is written in the magical realist style, there’s reference to god, clairvoyance and a wrapped timeline. The story’s incongruity is taken as fate and the powerlessness of man. Gioia points out the subtle intersection of human values and the supernatural with the physical world is an aspect of magical realism, seen in the novella. Martinez explains that in 1920s-30s the Latin American novel only portrayed regional or national life and customs realistically. Magical realism is part of the realist tradition of 19thC. In1940s Latin American novels got influenced by modernist novels of Woolf, Joyce and Faulkner, Resulted in Latin American writer’s insistence on the “right intervention”, their works constructed new realities, not reflection of the existing themes. Magical realism incorporated fantastical or mythical elements frankly into realist fiction. Marquez uses strange and surreal details to highlight ordinary events, in the opening of the novel the narrator discusses a dream Santiago had before his death, that he was having a happy dream but woke up feeling covered in bird shit. This whimsical detail works against the journalistic, investigative narrative style and urges the reader towards different conceptual areas between reality and fiction which the reader has to disentangle.
The reader in suspense throughout although the event is told to us from the beginning it’s the reader’s responsibility to decipher what actually is the mystery about. Although the narrator focuses on Santiago’s story the actual suspense is about Angela and Bayardo’s story. Jill Waters observe that the novel can be seen as a post modern novel that takes the basic conventions of a good story, traditional structure, and stable characterization and turns them upside down. The author invites the readers to distrust all, characters and especially the narrator, to make up their own minds regarding what’s happening in the story. Shows the text is only another reconstruction of the given evidence thereby leaving the reader’s thoughts and responses open. Each piece of writing urges its readers to be aware of accepting what the author has to say at face value; there’s no universal truth only series of representations says Martinez.

THE OTHER STORY: DIALOUGE BETWEEN THE NARRATOR AND THE READER

The narrator is unreliable and provides fragmented information so the reader has to add together the pieces to stage the victim’s death. Isabel R.Vergara observes that then the fragments of “others” stories like of Victoria Guzman, Divina Flor and Clotilde Armenta immediately become apparent. The motives of Bayardo and Santiago are left uncertain creating the ambiguity. The arrival of the bishop changes the order of the town and Santiago’s daily routine as usually he goes ridding on Monday mornings, him not going makes his murder possible.
The memories of the old mother[Santiago’s] blend together with the narrators perspective, an united voice describes Santiago’s appearance and character, “I saw him in her memory”( chronicle of a death foretold, pg 3), “he had just turned twenty one years old . He was slim, pale and had his fathers arab eyelids and curly hair … happy with his solitary mother … by nature Santiago was cheerful, peaceful and open hearted” (chronicle, pg3).
Victoria Guzman gives a contradicting description of Santiago “he always woke up with the face of a bad night” and “he was just like his father …a shit” (chronicle, pg 5). Readers are told of Victoria’s dislike for Santiago as her daughter was “destined to sleep with Santiago Nasar” as she had slept with his father. The murder takes place due to a series of coincidences, the bishops arrival, Santiago leaving through the wrong door, Victoria’s lie, the mothers misinterpretation of the dream etc. “ no one could understand such fatal coincidences the investigating judge… must have sensed them without daring to admit it”( chronicle pg 11). The judge and the narrator want to leave the impression that everything happened as coincidences but the readers know better. Isabel Rodriguez Vergara says “there is explicit ambiguity about the two heroes, Santiago and Bayardo, one can’t understand them [their] true intentions are unknown”. This truth is never revealed in the narrative but the vigilant reader can guess it. In the last part is told in a plural, joint voice combining the narrative voice with other characters voices like the final chorus of a drama, “for years we could not talk about anything else…life spun around a single common anxiety” (chronicle, pg 113). Isabel Rodriguez Vergara says that this paragraph contains the metaphor of reading of the text as the narrator wishes it to be. But the reading is juxtaposed of episodes that’s a “dialogic reading” an analysis of their consciences by characters participating in the crime in which the narrator was also involved. Jorge Olivares points out that The narrator constantly engages the reader to trust his credibility yet the reader remains doubtful of him, falling into a dialogic genre as the novella constructs a narrative inform of a dialogue to find the truth, opposed to a monological technique which assumes an already established truth. Juxtapositions of the characters and events in the novel are presented as parodies from the different point of views, all elements of the text are in opposition shaping them in an extended dialogue.
The writing disguises the voice of the narrator, a metafictional dimension. Olivares says it’s a “self conscious novel”, the title mocks and urges the reader to enter the investigating process of the intertextual construction, dramatizing the reading process.
Marquez questions the phenomenon of nonlinear reading, the novella and of writing itself, he writes to understand himself as the narrator comments,“ but no matter how much they tossed the story back and forth, no one could explain to me how the poor Santiago Nasar ended up being involved in such a mix-up” ( chronicle, pg13). As Santiago life ends the reader too ends reading the text in confusion. The narrative dramatizes the situation of the impossibility of knowing the “ultimate truth”. Olivares shows that even though the text pretends to expose crime it actually exposes its own novelistic conventions by organizing the text around three interrelated acts of copulation, assassination and writing. The text can be seen as a satire a, a plurivalent text that holds many voices simultaneously. Its intertextuality subverts its own notion of genre by parodying itself, subverting the very notion of the relationship between life and art truth.

ANGELA THE TEXT IN SEARCH OF ITS READER FOR COMPLETION

A “double deception” happens (Olivares, pg2); the sexual deception of Angela and the consequeses of that sexual act and its discourse generate a textual deception as it disguises itself as a mimetic chronicle to trap its readers. Olivares sees the text is organized around the interrelated acts of copulation, assassination and writing forming a syntagmatic sequence which seemingly forms a paradigmatic pattern. This metafiction narrative urges readers to make comments on the dynamics of reading and writing but those comments are not in control of the author, they can be with or against the issue depending on the reader’s opinions.
The narrator implies Santiago didn’t violate Angela. Angela names Santiago but no specific account is told, the accusation doubtful. It’s unclear who took Angela’s virginity; she doesn’t clarify and avoids answering questions straightforwardly. Only Angela knows the secret so evidence is seeked from her. Later in the text she recounts her story to anyone who wants to hear it but never clarifies. Paul Lehman observes that Angela wrote letters to Bayardo expressing the secrets of her heart but the letters are unopened. Bayardo carries the secret in his hands, a conscious fictional allusion to the secret of the text. The readers can see the secret but not know it. Most people believe in Santiago’s innocence as he had enough opportunity to satisfy his sexual desires with Divina Flor in the house, at Maria Cervantes brothel and in his romantic relationship with Flora Miguel and saw Angela as a nun. When Angela was asked about culprit she searched for names and found Santiago’s the most suitable. Jill Waters say there are no clear suspects and no possibility of violation as Angela was never left alone. The readers are left to imagine even the absurd possibility of a young woman faking the loss of her virginity in a society where a woman’s virginity is valued.
“She became the mistress of her own free will and she became a virgin again just for him” (chronicle, pg 127). Angela didn’t lose her virginity by being a mans mistress but by being the mistress of her own free will. Paul Lehman says she became “a woman in charge of her own situation [her marriage] in which she was seemingly powerless”.
Angela says “he was my author” (the chronicle, pg131) equating the sexual act with the creative act, Angela’s seduction is the generic core of the novel. Olivares suggests that reader’s curiosity invited by organizing text and sex together, textualisation of sex, putting the seed on the virgin page. Angela an authored needs to search a reader in order to complete the necessary “ménage-a-trios” that will affect her “realization” (Wolfgang Iser), Bayardo arrives to complete the reading of Angela. Angela’s love story is an allegory of the dynamics of fiction forming a sexual\textual triangle with Santiago as the author, Angela as the text and Bayardo as the reader. The “convergence of the text and the reader brings the literary experience “(Iser). Thus the novel can also tell Angela’s story and the fate of her reading.
In this novel literally the death of the author (Santiago) is the cost of the birth of the reader. Reader oriented theorists argue that once the author has produced a text the reader takes over to accomplish its realization by filling in the gaps left in the text. This novel dramatizes this issue. Angela can’t deny the false accusation now as it would only cover up the earlier narrative not erase it, unable to right her wrong she accepts her condition and refuses to camouflage “truth” with a “lie”. Olivares says that this refusal to author a fiction gives her authority as now she and her family has the right to invoke the honor code to clear the family name. Angela by her statement and by not writing herself back to virginity produces a type of writing signaling the seducers death. Santiago’s execution seen as a triple inscription of violence, sex and writing. The text no longer needs its author; Angela writes Santiago off through her brother’s revenge she metaphorically killed Santiago. Santiago is killed through Angela his own creation thus Santiago killed himself as Barthes implies in his essay Death of the Author that the act of writing entails a death wish and the published text is a weapon that executes the demise of its author. When Santiago authors Angela he must have been aware of the consequences of his sexual\textual act. He voluntarily signed his authorial suicide and Angela his extended (graphic) self, his text has no choice than to comply with his death wish.
Writing brings death of Angela’s author and re (birth) of her reader, by inscribing herself Angela becomes an author in order to lure her reader, Bayardo. She literally uses writing to reclaim her husband, her initially reluctant reader with her letters. She is now in control of her sexual\textual gaps and seeks to fulfill them. When Bayardo returns in response to her letters she gladly surrenders her (textual) authority to him, her reader in order to accomplish her realization as a woman and as a text.
Angela absorbed her (dead) author’s virility and now is in search of an equally virile reader with whom she can accomplish the “cooperative activity of reading”. Since the author is gone the locus of authority shifts to the text. Angela’s narrative power over Bayardo, her reader finds a symbolic expression in her letters. Olivares concludes that the novels self consciousness authorizes the reader to see this process of reconstruction of a sexual relationship after years of separation as an analogous of the act if reconstructing a text. By re-reading Angela, Bayardo is able to understand her secret. So mutually consented Angela the text and Bayardo the reader live happily implies Olivares. So the self conscious novel has an equally self conscious reader who has allowed him to be seduced by a powerful metafiction. . Agency

The author’s death means that the author was an ideological construct or the author is written by the conventions of writing. The death of the author theory creates a conceptual space for new work, where a composition theory could replace the outmoded modernist notion of the author with agency. Apt for the post-modern condition. This resulted in rejection of unitary representation of the composer. Writers not the originating source but a relay point in the circulation of discourse. Rid of the mystifying figure of the author, we can consider the notion of agency, filling the gaps left by the death of the author. John Timbur the theory of agency transcends the illusions of the past and clarifies the present. The death of the author brings a sense of anxiety as the post modernists had reached an impasse. The author is dead and there is nothing to replace it. So this theory brought us back to the problem of agency. According to Marx Agency refers to practical logic by which people negotiate their ways of life and unite their activity and experiences in the world.
John Timbur says the theory of the death of the author is misleading as it’s told in a way that turns agency into “the missing link”, the subject of the forthcoming theories that fill the conceptual void left by the author’s death. The theory of agency rises from the desire arising from the empty feeling left by the author’s death and destruction of the transcendental subject. Due to the devastation of the world wars people needed to believe in a universal omniscient\omnipotent creator who is in control of all. Eagleton describe that it results in a compensatory fantasy “unable to break the structure of state power, post structuralism found it possible instead to subvert the structures of language and to relocate agency…in the critical work…of language” (the introduction to literary theory, pg142). Death of the author triggers self fashioning of the post modern discourses.

CONCLUSION

Roland Barthes believes that the author is becomes the part of the process of reading or spectating ( Caughie pg 200). The reader invents the persona of the author which in turn imposes “a limit on the final text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the reading” (Caughie pg211). The author is placed on the text to be blamed on by the critic who claims the text can be “explained”. Barthes claims “[writing] is to be disentangled’ [not] deciphered, the structure can be followed…but there is nothing beneath. The space of writing is to be ranged over, not pierced” (death of the author, pg3). By refusing to apply a definitive meaning on the text, the reader liberates it. However critics and readers do place meaning upon a work. Barthes himself falls prey to his own argument and places judgment on the works of critics and readers.
Michael Foucault in his essay what is an author questions peoples want to trace ideas back to a certain person. No solution is provided rather the spaces left by the author are examined. He “reconsider[s] the problems that arise in the use [and function] of an authors name” (Foucault, pg282). “the authors name characterizes a particular manner of existence of discourse…that possesses an authors name is not to be immediately consumed and forgotten…rather its status and its manner of reception are regulated by the culture in which it circulates” (Foucault, pg 284).Foucault gives the author some existence agrees a form of author exists but only along side the text. Barthes and Foucault argue that the author is a construct of the reader or the text, but if there was a single creative force behind a piece of art then there would be no theory, only facts. finally I would say that the author behind this paper are many as I have taken ideas of various authors but all their ideas found a focal point within myself and this text. The author has some existence although not omnipotent, not in control of all the responses to this work.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. Death of an Author.
Corbin. “Week XII chronicle of a death foretold”. Lit 2120 survey of world literature. http://ccsblog-of-blog.blogspot.in/2008/12/week-xii-chronicle-of-death-foretold.html. Web.
Gioia, Ted. “Chronicle of a death foretold” new angles on an old genre: post-modern mystery. http://www.postmodernmystery.com/chronicle of a death foretold.html. Web.
Kercher, Dona. M. “chronicle of a death foretold: notes on parody and the artist”. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/20119389?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102873529987. Web.
Lehman, Paul. “Whodunnit? A Textual Investigation of the Deflowering of Angela Vicario in Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold.” http://mrhoyesibwebsite.com/Prose%20Texts/Chronicle/Critical%20Articles/Who%20dunnit.htm. Web.
Lilburn, Jeffery M. “Chronicle of a death foretold”. culturespanishamerica.files.wordpress.com. Web.
Martinez, Amanda. “Chronicle of a death fortold-gabriel gracias Marquez”. www.de martitian summaries.com. web.
Marquez, Gabriel Gracias. Chronicle of a Death Foretold .Delhi: Doaba publicatins, 2002. Print
Mongaya, Karlo. “Marquez’s chronicle of a death foretold”. http://karlomongaya.wordpress.com/2009/02/06/marquezs-chronicle-of-a-death-foretold/ .web. 6 February 2009.
Olivares, Jorges. “García Marquez’s Crónica de una muerte anunciada as Metafiction. http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208312. Web.
Trimbur, John. Agency and the Death of an Author: Partial Defense of Modernism.
Vergara, Isabel Rodriguez. “Chronicle of a death foretold violence as a genre”. http://www.educoas.org/Portal/bdigital/contenido/interamer/interamer_64/art1/chronicle.aspx?culture=pt. Web. 1998
Waters, Jill. “Chronicle of a death foretold by Gabriel gracias Marquez”. Radio drama reviews Online. http://www.radiodramareviews.com/id721.html.web.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Ying, Victor. “Chronicle of a death foretold narration, a presentation for IB English 11” http://prezi.com/qnzs3aguwlnr/chronicle-of-a-death-foretold-narration/. Web. 23 may 2011.
Zuniga, Jonathan. “Chronicle of a death foretold magical realism”. http://prezi.com/vbgpokmx_m1j/chronicle-of-a-death-foretold/. Web. 10 October 2012.