Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of ~ Death Foretold is a
spiralling search for satisfying explanations of why events occur as
they do. The first sentences prefigure the book's concern with the
nature of memory and our perception of reality as describable in words.
The narrator's declared intention of reassembling "the broken mirror of
memory" allows the scrutiny of many kinds of reflections: dream
images, recollections and retrospective insights, repetitions and
contradictions. Memory is both individual and collective; separate
voices are joined in a town history. The story of a small town murder
becomes a chronicle of a universal need to understand the purpose of
life. The fallibility of memory and of words is expanded into the
impossibility of recovering the past objectively. We are able to
perceive repeated patterns of behavior but the meaning of history eludes
us. Interwoven throughout the cycling narrative fabric of repetitions,
mockeries and fragmented insights are affirmations of the creativity
and strength of human imagination, and Chronicle is ultimately a
celebration of the power of words, despite the inadequacy of language
to mirror objective reality