Priscilla Aguilar

Mr. Smith

IB English

9 December 2020

Magic in the Air

In the classic novella, ​Chronicle of a Death Foretold​, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

implements magical realism to emphasize the insignificant details and depict the characters’

various perspectives of the truth. Throughout the novel, Marquez depicts supernatural

occurrences not only realistically but as well as factually. When the narrator goes to visit Xius,

he deliberately illustrates that “things had been disappearing little by little” and that one night it

occurred to him to “hold a spiritual seance in order to clear up the mystery” and the “soul of

Yolanda Xius confirmed in her own handwriting that it was in fact she who was recovering knick

knacks of her happiness for her house death” (Marquez 86-87). Instead of believing that other

people were stealing his furniture, they accept and believe that the spirit of Yolanda is taking

things from the house. Marquez chooses to imbed the element of supernatural in order to portray

that countless individuals will accept anything other than the reasonable truth in order to prevent

inevitable events that will ultimately diminish one’s reality.

Additionally, the repeated motif of dreams correlates to expressing one’s belief that

dreams are able to foreshadow events. Placida Linero, Santiago’s mother, had a “well earned

reputation as an accurate interpreter of other people’s dreams'' (Marquez 4). The week before

Santiago’s murder, he continously had dreams, but his mother “hadn’t noticed an ominious

augury in [the] two dreams of her son’s…” (Marquez 4). Santiago is depicted as having a six

sense in which he had inherited his mother’s magical ability to interpret dreams. Although it is
presented that dreams foreshadow harmful events, her magical ability also portrays that no one

helped Santiago, even if it was before the day of his murder. Placida and Santiago’s

superstitious, yet magical ability, created a false reality of believing that they would be safe at all

times which ultimately resulted in Santiago’s foretold death.

Gabriel Garcia Marqeuz deliberately reveals the truth about arranged marriages through

the different women throughout the novel. Many women in the novel have had arranged

marriages including Angela Vicario, one of the prominent characters. Angela “obeyed [men]

blindly...because they made [her] believe that they were experts in men’s tricks” and “got

married with that illusion” (Marquez 38). The arranged marriages that Gaberial Marquez

displays, reveals how accustomed societies ruin the perception of love within an individual.

Marquez purposely critiques the traditional society that still continues these customs and

conclusively reveals how the arranged marriages end in pure misery. Thus, Gabriel Garcia

Marquez illustrates the consequences of various perspectives through magical realism.