Examining The Novel Chronicle Of A Death English Literature Essay

Narrative Technique is the method used to bring out the story to the reader and both the works are different in the type of narrative that they are written in. Chronicle of a death foretold is written in first person narrative where as Death in Venice is written in third person omniscient. Chronicle of a Death Foretold is written in an unconventional first person narrative that is, while the narrator tells the story in fist person it is from an omniscient point of view. The narrator is constructing and telling the story of Santiago Nasar’s death by putting together what different people had to say about his death that happened 27 years ago. Basically like a past tense narrative but it is not the type that a person usually reads about, as in a typical first person narrative we only know the narrators point of view and not what the other characters are thinking, but in Chronicle of a Death Foretold the whole book is based on multiple points of view regarding what happened to Santiago by the characters in the book, their memories of the incident of Santiago Nasar’s murder. An example of the first person narrative in Chronicle of a Death Foretold would be on page 3, at the starting of the page ‘I was recovering from the wedding revels in the apostolic lap of Maria Alejandrina Cervantes, and I only awakened………’ Death in Venice is a simple, conventional third person narrative where in there are no I’s or me’s, the narrator is explaining what happens as if he were watching everything happen from above the characters. Even though the narrator is giving an account of what is happening in the book from his own point of view, somehow he is yet able to read the characters minds and tell the readers what the characters are thinking. Aschenbach does not ‘communicate’ with the readers directly, or ‘tell’ the readers his thoughts directly. We are told about Aschenbach from the ‘narrator’ of the novel. This technique gives the readers a sense of detachment from him, because of the distance created by the author between the reader and Aschenbach, and helps enrich the novel by leaving us pondering full of questions. Some questions are answered, some are not.

Both the books have a detached aura to them. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold the narrator is detached as what he is narrating that is Santiagos murder had taken place 27 years ago and thus the emotional feeling of Santiagos death did not greatly affect him or any other characters while they narrate the events. Thus the feeling of a detached narrator is there in the book Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Where as in Death in Venice there is a feeling of detachment because the reader is not connected to the main character Aschenbach in anyway the narrative technique itself creates the detached aura as mentioned earlier.

Both the books also have great emphasis on time; they both in fact start off with reference to time. Chronicle of a Death Foretold starts off with, ‘On the day they were going to kill him …..got up at five-thirty in the morning …’. Death in Venice starts off with, ‘On a spring afternoon in 19–, the year in which for months on end so grave a threat …… peace of Europe,… fiftieth birthday…..’ Thus it can be observed that both books have an emphasis on time as there is not only a reference to time in the first lines of the books but this continues throughout the starting of the books. The emphasis on the time tells the reader a lot about the book that may not be mentioned in it as if the reader knows the time period he/ she can also make other conclusions about the books based on that time period that he knows the book is from. For example in Death in Venice the reader can conclude that Aschenbach is an old man who is living in the time when the First World War was about to break out and there is emphasis on the fact that war was about o break out as the ‘ grave’ threat is referred to more than once. The time factor also comes in the books as Death in Venice is in a way based on present events, events narrated as they happen where as in Chronicle of a Death Foretold the narrator is telling the reader the events that had taken place twenty-seven years ago from multiple view points. ”He was always….,’ Placida Linero, his mother, told me twenty-seven years later, recalling the details of that unpleasant Monday.’

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Chronicle of a Death Foretold has a more interesting; one can say a staring with some shock impact, than that of Death in Venice as in Death in Venice the book starts of slow much slower than the starting of Chronicle of a Death Foretold and also Death in Venice makes it read make mathematical deduction on time of year, date, etc thus in a way asking the reader to be calculating because there are constant reference to time in some form or the other.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold as suggests is about death but not in a chronicle (chronological) order as the title says as the reader learns that Santiago Nasar has already been murdered at the start of the book; the death of Santiago has already taken place in the start of the book and the rest of the book the reader learns of the different views that people had of the events that were leading to his death. The exact opposite is the case in Death in Venice as the protagonist Aschenbach in not dead in the start of the book but the book tells the story of the events that finally at the end of the book lead to his demise. Thus among the two books Death in Venice can be called the more traditional and formally written one where as Chronicle of a Death Foretold cannot be called so. The reader does get the feeling that something is going to happen to Aschenbach in the first chapter because Aschenbach goes for a walk to overcome his writers block, which he usually never does and along his walk he comes across a stonemasons yard full of head stones which gave him the feeling of being in the presence of a graveyard and then exactly after which he see the man that is said to be standing ‘ in the portico of the chapel, above two apocalyptic beasts that guard the steps leading up to it….’ . This part gives the reader a strange feeling. First it is the stonemasons yard which gives the feeling of a graveyard then there is the mysterious man who is said to be standing near apocalyptic beasts, apocalyptic which is associate with the end of the world, doom, death, destruction and to add to that when Aschenbach looks back to see the man he had disappeared which was strange and this gives the reader the feeling of something bad was going to happen. None of this happens in Chronicle of a Death Foretold as we learn of Santiagos death in the start itself so thus there is no suspense building up to his death.

With regard to the characters in both the books, Aschenbach is the one that is more influenced by external events in the manner that his actions are always a result of some external force for example when it appeared it was going to rain Aschenbach stop at the cemetery for shade . Contradictory to Aschenbach, Santiago was not so influenced by the external events.