Chronicles of the Death Foretold and Religion

Chronicle of a Death Foretold: The Role of Religion

The role of religion in Colombian culture and especially in Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, plays a huge part in main event of the story, murder of Santiago Nassar. The society and its community groups featured in the story have close relations with Catholic religion and church. The most important part of Catholic religion is the idea of that a woman's virginity have to be kept until her marriage. The importance of the church is clearly shown in the novel, as it’s an important part of most Latin American countries and communities. This is represented in big preparations they’ve made for the bishop's visit. It was kind of ironic how everyone thought that bishop will get off from his boat that year, when he did not even get off of his boat over the past years. The obvious demonstration of strong religion can also be when young Angela Vicario’s secret that she was not a virgin when she got married to Bayardo and then divorced him, her twin brothers decided to kill a man who did that to their sister. The brothers’ decision was to kill Santiago, who took Angela Vicario’s virginity; it was come from society pressures. People in the town expected them to do that. It shows that the characters in the novel have lack of their individuality.

Religion in this novel takes a big role. However, it’s a giant role in a negative way. The town is still renewable around public values which were set over hundreds of years ago. While they don’t have enough strengths to overcome these public values and adapt them to the present day societal. This shown when the characters in the novel only watched over on what happening, but never tried to prevent it. They have always thought that nothing was going to happen, and when the bishop was came to their town; therefore, they’re never believed to all the words which said toward Santiago. The public values renewable around the religious...