Fatalism and Human Stupidity in Chronicle of a Death Foretold Analysis

Fate as a Result of Human Awkwardness

The narrative contains all the basic elements of fate: there is one death (an inescapable finality), that death has been announced, and there is an eyewitness account which simply tells what happened, but no capacity to intervene in the events.

The work, Chronicle of a Death Foretold, is presented as the author's incursion into the world of fatalism. Santiago Nasar is doomed, fatally. No compromise is possible, because fatalism is a structural element without which the work will not be what it is.

Destiny, Stupidity, and the Tragic Result

Destiny also dominates the story, making it a fatal tragedy of sense. But unlike classical tragedy, here it is not the gods who decide men's fate from above; rather, this tragedy is wrought by persistent human stupidity, with various concrete forms reviewed in the work, all converging into the same tragic result.

Fundamental Contradictions

The book includes a fundamental contradiction: everyone knows that the Vicario brothers are going to kill Santiago Nasar, except for Santiago himself, who does not know until the very end. This contradiction is presented cleverly as a reality of the plot: human stupidity.

The second major contradiction is that in a closed and puritanical society in which everyone knows everything well, Angela Vicario could lose her virginity and such a fact remain unknown.

Ambiguity and Loss of Control

These contradictions fatefully result from ambiguities. There are many facts that neither the characters, nor the reader, nor even the narrator make clear. For starters, the book is organized around the essential ambiguity about who committed the crime of honor for which Angela Vicario claimed Santiago Nasar was the victim. The reader is left with the feeling that Santiago Nasar was killed for something he probably did not commit. But when Angela is in a situation conducive to revealing the truth to the narrator, many years later, she wholeheartedly endorses her version (that it was Santiago Nasar), but nobody believes her.

The Role of Blunders and Clumsiness

These contradictions and ambiguities strip the characters of control over their actions; the events escape them, due to their clumsiness, fatally out of hand. The narrator does not comment on this point, but he does comment on the many coincidences that are seen in the account of the facts.

All these incidents are nothing more than true blunders that cause the fatal human tragedy. Finally, the villagers are particularly clumsy when interpreting events around them. They misinterpret the signs of the impending tragedy.

In conclusion, it seems clear that the characters in this novel are helpless slaves of fate that comes to fruition through the many blunders committed by the key figures of the tragedy.