Things Fall Apart and Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a novel that deals with English colonization and its effects on the Igbo society in Nigeria. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a novella that tells the story of the murder of Santiago Nasar. Both Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold showcase societies in which a high degree of masculinity and violence are present. However, the drive and portrayal of these key aspects differ for both of these communities as Okonkwo’s masculine drive comes from an internal force, the result of insecurity owing to his father’s failures.

Inversely, the Vicario brothers’ drive to commit violence comes from their community, making it an external force.

Things Fall Apart’s Okonkwo devotes his life to achieving a flawed, unrealistic masculine expectation because of an internal conflict that comes from not wanting to be like his father. We can see that Okonkwo despised everything his father was and resented him for not having any titles–from which men in this society gain their reputation and respect.

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“But for a man whose father had no yams, there was no other way. [...] so at a very early age when he was trying desperately to build a barn through sharecropping Okonkwo was also fending for his father's house” (Achebe 22). In Okonkwo’s eyes, his father was not a man of respect. He was unable to support his family nor was he a prosperous farmer that cultivated yams, taking into account that yams were vital to their society, symbolized wealth and were the “man’s crop.

” Since his father left him no yams, Okonkwo had to ask Nwakibie, the wealthiest man of the clan, to lend him yams to start his farm. In essence, Okonkwo had to build his wealth up from scratch, earning the respect of his fellow clan members.

Moreover, Okonkwo’s prosperous home set-up portrays a direct contrast to his father and his lifestyle. Achebe also describes Okonkwo’s home is great depth as he writes, “He had a large compound… his own hut, or obi, stood behind the only gate in the red walls. Each of his three wives had her own hut, which together formed a half moon behind the ‘obi’” (14). Evidently, the structure of Okonkwo’s household shows his prosperity as he was able to build his own hut, a hut for each of his wives– each with a separate hut for their hens, a barn, a medicine house and a shed for the goats. Interestingly, his wives’ huts surrounded him in what is described as a “half moon” which essentially gives him a sense of domination, showing he was the head of his household. The elaborate and complex form of his home creates an evident distinction between him and his father, as it shows that Okonkwo’s resentment drove him to do everything he could to obtain wealth and easily support his family.

Okonkwo’s masculinity, once defined in opposition to his father’s “femininity,” becomes violent when he beats Ojiugo, his youngest wife during the Week of Peace– a week that was observed to honor the goddess of the earth before planting new crops. Okonkwo’s internal aggression was so strong that it had to be checked by the community. “He walked back to his obi to await Ojiugo’s return. And when she returned he beat her very heavily. In his anger he had forgotten that it was the Week of Peace. [...] But Okonkwo was not the man to stop beating somebody halfway through, not even for fear of a goddess,” (Achebe 29-30).

This reflects how blinded Okonkwo was by anger and wanting to maintain this hypermasculine status that he overlooked his culture’s traditions and did what many in his clan would never dare do. Okonkwo disrespected a tradition that his clan had held for many years, that Ezeani, the priest of the earth goddess had to come and impede his violent actions. Okonkwo’s masculinity prevented him from holding a relationship with his wives as well as with his children. Okonkwo was asked not to participate in the death of Ikemefuna yet, he was the one who killed him. “He heard Ikemefuna cry, ‘My father, they have killed me!’ as he ran towards him. Dazed with fear, Okonkwo drew his machete and cut him down’ (Achebe 60). Okonkwo was growing fond of this boy, he looked at him as if he were his own son and Ikemefuna would even refer to him as his father. However, the fear of expressing emotions and being thought of as weak and feminine drove him to participate in the murder of someone he loved.

On the contrary, in Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Pedro and Pablo Vicario were influenced by the people around them to meet distorted masculine expectations. As stated in the text, the boys were raised to be men. In this town, the culture in which the Vicario brothers were raised placed many responsibilities on the males. That’s all they knew growing up, it’s all they saw in their town. Therefore, when Bayardo San Roman returns their sister home, Angela Vicario because she was no longer a virgin, Angela’s mom was furious. “The twins returned home a short time before three, urgently summoned by their mother” (Marquez 47). She calls her sons to come home and it is then when they feel the obligation to defend their sister’s honor–since their father cannot. The Vicario Brothers feel as if this obligation has fallen on them and they must carry out such task even if they do not want to. “So he put the knife in his hand and dragged him off almost by force in search of their sister's honor. ‘There's no way out of this,’ he told him. ‘It’s as if it had already happened’” (Marquez 61).

This sheds light on Pedro Vicario’s hesitancy to murder Santiago Nasar even if he had in fact, taken their sister’s virginity. Pablo had to literally place a knife in Pedro’s hand and drag him as they searched for Santiago. He also explicitly states “there's no way out of this,” portraying the pressure in which they were under by these expectations everyone expected them to meet in order to restore their sister’s “honor.” It is clear to see that the Vicario twins did not want this task to fall upon their hands but were expected to because of their male role in their family.

In addition to the familial responsibilities, the Vicario twins were subject to other social influence that allowed for all of the events to occur. They told every person they had an encounter with yet no one tried to stop them. No one believed they would actually carry out such an act. The Colonel thought it was enough to simply take away their weapons and send them off to sleep. Then when Cristo told the Colonel that he had just seen the Vicarios and that they were once again armed, he did nothing. By the time he wanted to do something, Santiago had already been murdered. Moreover, Prudencia Cortes, Pablo's’ fiancee also added to this social pressure, “‘I knew what they were up to’ she told me, ‘and I didn’t only agree, I never would have married him if he hadn’t done what a man should do’” (Marquez 62).

She explicitly states that if Pablo had not defended his sister’s honor–she wouldn’t have considered him a man, much less marry him at all. This again reinforces the societal pressure that drove the Vicario brothers to execute their entire plan because in the eyes of their society, they needed to murder Santiago because it is what a “man” would do, leaving them with no other option. Everyone in their town knew what they were planning to do, yet no one did anything to stop Pedro and Pablo, instead they watched as this horrific moment happened before their eyes in the town square.

Both Achebe’s novel and Marquez’s novella clearly emphasize masculinity. The characters, though they had different drives their influences were geared in the direction to have this high level of flawed masculinity to defend honor and maintain a reputation. In both the novel and the novella, this high level of masculinity leads to violence and ultimately death. In Things Fall Apart, Okonkwo’s internal conflict and obsession with social status end up resulting the decline of his character and ultimately his suicide. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, the societal influences drove the Vicario Brothers to carry out the murder of Santiago Nasar in order to defend their sister’s honor.