Indeed, this fact is made clear when the two brothers are eventually acquitted at trial because what they have done is to defend the honor of the family, just as they are expected to do. Angela's life after the murder is simple, as noted by one critic who writes that "the forlorn Angela Vicario divides her days between the nocturnal and surreptitious correspondence with Bayardo and an equally accomplished dedication to embroidery by daylight" (Alonso 268)
This change in Angela has to be as much a surprise to her as it is to Bayardo and the reader, but again, her choices are limited. Other females in the community have been lusting after Bayardo before his wedding, and he is cited by one young woman who says, "I could have buttered him and eaten him alive" (Marquez 202)
She pursues only the domestic act of embroidery day after day, and though she did not love Bayardo and has no real tie to him, he is the only person outside the family with whom she communicates. One critic note the long-term change in Angela, stating that "she undergoes an extraordinary conversion and discovers in herself a love for Bayardo San Roman as tremendous and inexplicable as his for her" (Michaels para
Among these are Flora Miguel, Placida Linero, Victoria Guzman, and Divina Flor. His fiancee is Flora Miguel, and she knows what is to happen and does not help him: "She feels humiliated and hurt because of the rumor concerning why the Vicario brothers want to kill him and decides to end the relationship with Santiago instead of asking him for an explanation" (Pelayo 122)
In addition, the novel itself seems like an attempt to ritually cleanse the village of the murder. Another critic writes, "More importantly, the attempt to achieve cathartic release through the repetition of the original murder would carry with it the possibility of an endless cycle of contamination and atonement" (Bloom 266)
. But most agreed that the weather was funereal, with a cloudy, low sky'" (Hutcheon 76)
Born in Columbia in 1928, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a Nobel Prize winning novelist who often writes about his native Latin America with wit and a deep understanding of the culture of the area. Literary critic Ruben Pelayo notes, "One year after the publication of 'Chronicle of a Death Foretold,' in 1982, newspapers around the world announced that Garcia Marquez was that year's winner of the Nobel Prize in literature" (Pelayo 111)
'Before God and before men,' Pablo Vicario said. 'It was a matter of honor' " (Marquez 55-56)