Quillhill started started this collaboration between readers to post their thoughts on Chronicle of a Death Foretold at the same time.

Quillhill’s Post
Stefanie’s Post
Sylvia’s Post
thisblackgirlreads’ Post

We’ll link back to all the posts here, but this is also your place to take part in the discussion.

I’m interested to know who other people believe was the true violator of Angela.

I would also like to nominate Glory, by Vladimir Nabokov as the next book slated for discussion.

I suspect Angela stilled loved the person who truly dishonored her and said it was Santiago Nasar because she didn’t think anyone would do anything to him. As to who the mysterious person was, I’m not sure. Certainly someone who lived in the town, and possibly, but I have no evidence of this, the narrator himself. Who do you think it might have been?

Glory sounds like a good next read.

Well, with no evidence either, I have always wondered if it was one or another of her brothers. Angela sounds so sure of herself, though, so maybe it is true: she named Santiago nasar because she thought he was the only one her brothers would fear killing, and so everyone who doesn’t believe it was Santiago Nasar is also right, because he is named only to protect the real perpetrator. She was soo upset with her mother, and by the time her brothers arrived she was dead calm.  What else passed between them besides blows?

Oh, now that’s an intriguing idea, and I must admit the thought flitted briefly into my mind too but I dismissed it because it would be just too terrible. One does have to wonder though just what passed between Angela and her mother. Then when the is mother is a grouchy old woman, she refuses to talk about the past and the narrator says “She had gone beyond what was possible to make Angela Vicario die in life.” But one of the brothers, if indeed the perpetrator was one of them, would have to be really good at keeping secrets. Plus they both apeeared to believe Angela when she said it was Nasar. Hmm.

I find fascinating Angela’s letter writing to Bayardo and his showing up all those years later with the letters and not a single one opened. What compelled Angela to write those letters and why did Bayardo come back when he was old? Why did he never read them?

Hi Everyone! Isn’t this fun? And here I thought I was late in getting to the party.

Who deflowered Angela is indeed a bit of a quandary. Nasar was said to prey only on those he could catch out in the country, but he made advances towards the kitchen maid and was apparently in the habit of seeing his fianc?e in private. Angela clearly accuses him three times, but she is never let out of her mother’s sight, and her friends say it can happen purely by accident, which is true.

In a way it doesn’t matter because Nasar becomes a sacrificial victim for the whole town, for their various sins, not the least of which is not preventing his murder. There are various stories in the Hebrew Bible where criminals are identified by lots; really it doesn’t matter who did it, as long as someone pays the price.

I think what compelled Angela to write those letters was, as Gabo says, “the fiery furrows of his African tool.” Perhaps she was “possessed” by the devilish Bayardo. I didn’t quite know what to make of all the diabolical imagery around him. Would any of this have happened without him? Or did he just expose what the town was ripe for?

Taking Sylvia’s interpretation, perhaps Angela does “learn to love” Bayardo. Santiago has been chosen from the swarm of confusing names to serve as the scape goat, whether guilty or not. Angela seems to accept this as fate. But from this point, she feels that Bayardo has unfairly suffered. Her letters breed themselves, their importance being fed by being unanswered, and her persistence might become a sort of penance, or even more likely a personal redemption, a transformation from “whore” to “angel”.

As a sidebar, then, do you think love is a matter of destiny or will? Is there one person we are each destined to love, or do we each make a conscious decision for ourselves who we will love? Is Angela just carrying through with her perceived destiny to love Bayardo, or is she making a choice to love him?

We might have to read Love in the Time of Cholera to find out what Gabo thinks about love!

That’s interesting, that Angela has the choice to love Bayardo. I think she must, because she changes her mind when the letter-writing starts and then becomes a little obsessive over the idea of him. But then, of course, she can’t stop and one can imagine her writing letters into eternity.

My question is, why on earth didn’t he read them? Or destroy them? Keeping them unopened seems like such a torturous thing to do.

I think you are right Sylvia, it doesn’t really matter who deflowered Angela, but it is interesting to speculate. I like your mythological take on the story

Bayardo was like the snake in the garden in a way, but the garden was already corrupted, Bayardo’s presence was what set the events in motion. Would the events have happened without him? Probably not unless another outsider made an appearance. I think it is Bayardo’s outsider status that was the catalyst.

As far as is love a matter of destiny or will, I think it can be both depending on what the one falling in love believes. Angela decided to fall in love with Bayardo. She did not want to marry him in the first place. But after he rejected her she seems to have changed her mind.

I’m not sure why Bayardo didn’t open the letters. Maybe he wanted to continue to punish Angela and he knew that if he read her letters he wouldn’t be able to stay away. Keeping them sealed allowed him to decide on his own terms if and when to return to Angela.

And - what’s the next Slaves book? I like the Nabakov, are there any other nominations? I’m tempted to suggest “Bleak House” but that’s more of a six-month project…

I think Bayardo, as a macho, wouldn’t want to read letters from the ‘flower’ who thwarted his will, but at the same time would be reluctant to part with any reminders of what was probably the most significant and mysterious (mythical?) event of his life. The fact that he was still wearing some of the same clothes when he returned perhaps shows that he was holding on to the past. I thought I detected aspects of Garcia Marquez’s ideas about “solitude” in this novella, and perhaps Bayardo and Angela’s inability to communicate is part of it.

As for the next book, I nominate anything with less than 1000 pages! Actually less than 500 would be OK too. Although I do have a hankering to read Vanity Fair since seeing the movie, and it’s pushing 800. Or maybe something romantic for Valentine’s? Or something uplifting to carry us through the holiday-less end of winter?

Does anyone think class or ethnicity plays a role in the events? Let’s say the roles of Bayardo and Santiago were reversed: do you think the brothers would have been so quick to kill someone they didn’t consider a “Turk”?

Oh, absolutely, but I don’t know enough about Colombian race relations to figure it out. Obviously it’s no accident that the prostitutes are mulattos, and interesting that Nasar mentions a Senegalese slave ship. I noticed that it was only the arabs who objected to Nasar’s murder and chased the twins, and it was an arab who Clotilde thought could stop it. It was odd that Nasar didn’t understand the warning in Arabic since earlier he had been toying with arabic words. Also it was the arab matriarch who cured the twins’ health. There are lots of fragments but I couldn’t put them together.

Here are a few other titles (of which I know almost nothing, but I am trying to broaden my interests) I will throw into the ring for selection:
Bridge of San Luis Rey, by Thornton Wilder
The Warden, by Anthony Trollope
Washington Swuare, by Henry James
The Virginian, by Owen Wister
Paris in the 20th Century, by Jules Verne
In the Flesh, by Clive Barker
The Matisse Stories, by AS Byatt
The Mirror Crack’d, by Agatha Christie

Input is welcome.

The Wilder sounds fascinating, but I suspect we’ve had enough Latin American fatalism for a while! Perhaps we should rotate through the continents...?