Gabriel Garcia Marquez\'s Chronicle of a Death

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis both place the protagonist in opposition to a prevailing family structure. At the same time, the family structure dictates personal identity, character traits, worldviews, and reactions to events. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold and in The Metamorphosis, personal identities are malleable and yet the changes that occur take place within a confining social structure at which family resides at the core. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Santiago Nasar is the death referred to in the title. Like Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Metamorphosis, Nasar has been unfairly stigmatized but neither receives help from his family. In fact, the family is presented as a source -- or at least an enhancer of -- suffering. Nasar in Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Samsa in The Metamorphisis share a common fate. They are isolated, ostracized, and stigmatized. They endure alienation and isolation that creates angst and a premature confrontation with mortality. Angela Vicario is the protagonist in Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in spite of the fact that the plot is driven more intensely by the passive nature of Nasar. Vicario is also a product of her family, and she is even less capable of self-determination because of the way family roles and ties define her character. Therefore, the central characters in both Marquez's Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Kafka's Metamorphosis suffer alienation and isolation as a result of poorly defined boundaries between self and family.

Angela Vicario in Chronicle of a Death Foretold lives largely in a fantasy world, which is similar to the way Gregor Samsa lives as if in a fantasy world in "The Metamorphosis." Both of their fantasy worlds are created in opposition to, or because of, their dysfunctional family structures and relationships. Vicario's senseless narcissism even leads to what is likely the death of an innocent man, Santiago Nasar. Even if Nasar is "guilty" of deflowering the virgin, Vicario assumes a cold-hearted stance toward the man. It is as if she is seeking vicarious revenge upon him or through all of mankind. Moreover, Vicario wields her sexual power over Nasar's life and over the life of her husband Bayardo San Roman. Although she has nothing to gain from the persecution of Nasar with the possible exception of preserving her reputation in her brothers' eyes, Vicario she enables the suffering of Nasar. In this same way, Samsa's sister does not go out of her way to help Gregor, instead allowing him to suffer in spite of their family ties. The difference is that with Angela Vicario, she persecutes and stigmatizes Nasar in order to please her two brothers; whereas the persecution and stigmatization of Samsa is achieved as a result of groupthink among the rest of the family. Groupthink is an extension of family acculturation in both Chronicle of a Death Foretold and Kafka's "Metamorphisis."

Vicario "was the prettiest" of her four sisters, claims the narrator (Marquez p. 32). She is therefore defined specifically in comparison with her sisters and only based on her looks. Gregor Samsa's looks also define his character in "The Metamorphosis." As he changed into a hideous unsightly creature, Gregor Samsa can no longer face his family. Their judgment of and reaction to Gregor is based on their revulsion, which shows that their love for him was conditional on his appearance. Angela Vicaro's appearance also determines others' reactions to her. If she were not attractive, she would not have been the perceived object of a deflowering. Moreover, Angela Vicario milks her attractiveness because she knows it provides her with sexually-derived power over men.

Angela's physical beauty is not matched by her inner beauty. Angela "had a helpless air and a poverty of spirit that augured an uncertain future for her," (p. 32). She is therefore much the opposite of Gregor Samsa. For Samsa, his external ugliness does not match up with who he is on the inside. On the inside, he is someone who loves and cares unconditionally for his family. As Ryan (1999) points out, the likely root word of Gregor Samsa's last name is samsara, which is the Hindu and Buddhist term used to describe the human condition of continual suffering and rebirth on the endless cycle of life and death. The suffering for Gregor is firmly rooted in his family of origin. The family does not know what to make of Gregor's transformation, and do not try to help him in any way. The Samsa reaction to Gregor's new shape encompasses the totality of human existential suffering.

Family in both stories is also viewed contextually within a greater community. The Samsas seem to have little in the way of community compared with the Vicario family. The illusion of Nasar's guilt is perpetuated not just by Angela Vicario and her family but also by the community around her, leading to complicity in the false conviction. The twin brothers Pedro Vicario and Pablo Vicario become convinced that Nasar is responsible for their sister's deflowering and thus they start the rumor that spreads throughout the town and forever alters the future of their own family as well as that of Nasar. As Christie (1993) points out, there was a "single common anxiety" that was shared by the entire community (p. 21).