Person of Interest

Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Who is Angela’s Perpetrator?

Our Claim:• The narrator is Angela’s actual perpetrator and

Santiago has been sacrificed as a result of Angela’s lie in order to protect her true lover; the chronicle is the narrator’s attempt to redeem himself.

Evidence #1:

Santiago is innocent because the knife comes out clean when he is stabbed.

QUOTE: “The strange thing is that the knife kept coming out clean,” Pedro Vicario declared to the investigator. “I’d given it to him at least three times and there wasn’t a drop of blood” (118).

Evidence #2:

Santiago and Angela never had an opportunity to be alone.

QUOTE: “ . . . Because no one believed that it had really been Santiago Nasar. They belonged to two completely different worlds. No one had ever seen them together . . .” (89).

Evidence #3:

Angela will not look the narrator in the eye because he wants “the truth.”

QUOTE: ‘The most current version, perhaps because it was the most perverse, was that Angela Vicario was protecting someone who really loved her and she had chosen Santiago Nasar’s name because she thought her brothers would never dare go up against him. I tried to get the truth out of her myself when I visited her the second time, with all my arguments in order, but she barely lifted her eyes from the embroidery to knock them down.

“Don’t beat it to death, cousin,” she told me. “He was the one”’ (90).

Evidence #4:

Santiago himself appeared innocent on the day of his death.

QUOTE: “Besides, when he finally learned at the last moment that the Vicario brothers were waiting for him to kill him, his reaction was not one of panic, as has so often been said, but rather the bewilderment of innocence” (101).

Evidence #5:

The judge found no proof that Santiago was the perpetrator.

QUOTE: “Such was the perplexity of the investigating magistrate over the lack of proof against Santiago Nasar that his good work at times seemed ruined by disillusionment. On folio 416, in his own handwriting and with the druggist’s red ink, he wrote a marginal note: Give me a prejudice and I will move the world. Under that paraphrase of discouragement, in a merry sketch with the same blood ink, he drew a heart pierced by an arrow. For him, just as for Santiago Nasar’s closest friends, the victim’s very behavior during his last hours was overwhelming proof of his innocence” (100).

Evidence #6:

If Santiago had taken Angela’s virginity, he would have told his friends.

QUOTE: “ . . . And nobody could have believed that one of us could have a secret without its being shared, particularly such a big secret” (41).

Evidence #7:

The narrator feels guilt which is sensed by Maria Alejandrina Cervantes.

QUOTES: ‘But suddenly she stopped, coughed from far off, and slipped out of my life.

“I can’t,” she said. “You smell of him”’ (78).

Evidence #8:

The narrator is the only character not controlled by fate, thus he’s an instrument of fate.

Evidence #9:

The narrator returns after 27 years to make sense of the murder, but can uncover no new evidence—he is the only townsperson not interviewed. He respects his mother’s wishes that he not write about the tragedy.

“Only a long time after the unfortunate wedding did she [Luisa Santiaga] confess to me that she actually knew him when it was too late to correct her October letter…. ‘He reminded me of the devil,’ she told me, ‘but you yourself told me that things like that shouldn’t be put into writing” (28).

Evidence #10:

Because the narrator was a family member, he would have had the easiest access to Angela.

“Angela was the prettiest of the four, and my mother said that she had been born like the great queens of history…I would see her year after year during my Christmas vacations, and every year she seemed more destitute in the window of her house” (32).

Is the narrator guilty, or not guilty of stealing Angela’s innocence and being morally responsible for Santiago’s death?

Write a 1 page response in which you agree or disagree with our claim. Make sure to explain your thoughts and to cite examples from the text. -

• 200 word response (Not including heading or title)

• Typed• MLA Format

The Assignment is Due Wednesday: