Chronicle And Metamorphosis

Family

in

“Chronicle of a Death Foretold”

&

“The Metamorphosis”

By Bernardo Ruz

Family is a very important theme to develop in both books, Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez, and The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. Family is one of the most important things in a person’s life, and even thoughGregor’s family was not really as nice to him as Santiago’s family , it still played a big role in his life and he still loved them and care about them.

From the beginning of this book you can see the importance of the family in Santiago’s life. Chronicle of a Death Foretold by García Márquez is a novella about the murder of Santiago Nasar by the two Vicario brothers in which a narrator is telling the story based on many people’s interviews. The first interview the narrator tells is the one of Plácida Linero, Santiago’s mother. Plácida Linero is an interpreter of other people’s dreams and she first tells that “he [Santiago Nasar] was always dreaming about trees” (P.3) but she had not noticed any ominous augury in those dreams of her son. “He was the man in my life” (P. 7) By the vocabulary it is used you can see how Plácida really regrets that she did not noticed anything in his dreams, because if she did she would have warned her son and pretty much saved him. Also when Santiago was ready to leave for the Bishop’s arrival, the only thing that interested his mother was Santiago’s health since she heard him sneeze while he was sleeping and it was for his son not to be soaked in the rain. Like all the mothers in the world Plácida Linero is worried too about her son’s health because she loves him and she wants him to be healthy. From the first pages you can notice the familial love that there is between Santiago Nasar and his mother.

On page five you can see the relation of the Santiago with his father. The narrator tell us that “He [Santiago Nasar] always slept the way his father had slept”, his father slept always with the weapon hidden in the pillowcase, but always before leaving the house he unloaded the gun and put the ammunition in another far place. “It was a wide custom established by his father ever since one morning when a servant had shaken the case to get the pillow out and the pistol went off as it hit the floor and the bullet passed through the dining room of the house next door and turned a life-size saint on the main altar of the church” (P. 6). In a close family the kid always follow the same steps as his parents and tries to be like them. “From her [mother] he had inherited a sixth sense. From his father he learned at a very early age the manipulation of firearms, his love for horses, and the mastery of high-flying birds of prey, but from him he also learned the good arts of valor and prudence” (P. 7). From these two pages you can see how close Santiago was to his father, how he followed him, how he learned from him and from his mistakes, and how he became the men he was thanks to his parents. Now here you can see how family played a big role in Santiago’s life.

On page forty-six after Angela told Bayardo San Román that she was not a virgin she got returned to her mom and when her mom found out that she was not virgin and that it was an insult for the family Vicario she started beating her up for two hours that the only thing Angela could remember was that she was holding her with one hand and beating with the other with such rage that she thought she was going to kill her. Angela’s brother did not come until dawn and, when they saw Angela lying face down on the dining room couch, she told them what happened. Pedro and Pablo Vicario, who were twenty-four years old and they were friends with Santiago, picked her up and ask her who was it, Angela only took the time necessary to say the name and looking into the shadows she said “Santiago Nasar” (P. 47) What García Márquez is trying to express in here is that in that period of time everybody judge by your family. If you were an important family with a clean last

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