“The limited moral compass that the towns’ people possess is what lets them down?” To what extent do you agree? "The chronicle of a death foretold.
Uploaded by saimah on Sep 28, 2012
In the novel The Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the novella portrays that the town’s people tend to follow cultural rules rather than follow what they think is right and wrong. The book highlights that because they live in a different society to ours what they believe is very different to what we believe. They believe in the honour code and superstition. Santiago’s death is mingled with illusory images that everything seems mystified: much like death itself. “He died without understanding his own death.” This is the narrator’s opinion of Santiago’s state of mind as he faced his death. Although everyone in the town seems to know about the plot against Santiago, the young man himself remains ignorant about it until only minutes before it takes place. He reacts, according to the narrator, not with the panic of someone whose sin has been discovered, but with the bewilderment of innocence. Santiago is innocent of wrongdoing, and thus cannot understand what is happening to him when he is killed. The fact that the story is about how a death consumes the lives of the entire town as well as the victim, shows that it is concerned with death in life and how we evaluate death, whether we have a belief about death, whether we welcome it or fear it. Not only is the account concerned with death in life on the literary level, but the people of the town feel obliged to honour and offer gifts to a bishop that doesn't even like the town. It is perhaps because they fear if they do not keep their faith, they are putting in jeopardy their fate after death; this is the primary concern of all religions, life after death and fear of the unknown. So far knowing all this and putting it into perspective through a town person’s beliefs and culture I believe that the lack of moral compass is what lets the town’s people down. They believe that because the honour of a person has been taken such as Angela Vicario’s that it is reasonable to kill the person who has made your family break the rules of society and have sex before marriage. This can be seen through the quote “The lawyer stood by the thesis of homicide in legitimate defence of honour, which was upheld by the court of good faith, and the twins declared at...