Chronicles of a Death Foretold - Best Synopsis Ever - Part III (The Aftermath)

I decided not to draw too many pictures here because I'm sick of this story and this is the less important part and it's not like anyone cares much. I'll make this quick.
An autopsy is done on Santiago Nasar's body. It's a huge deal but turns out to serve absolutely no purpose. The Vicario brothers spend some time in jail before being tried, and then they are let off.

Hortensia Baute (the woman who thought she saw blood on the knives much before the murder took place) goes mad and runs down the street naked. So random, and strangely funny.

Like Archimedes, but not that enlightened. Or maybe more enlightened, because she saw something before it happened?

Clotilde Armenta's 86 year old husband Don Rogelio de la Flor sees the pieces of Nasar's body and does not survive the shock. (He dies.)

Yes, I know he doesn't look 86. That's because, as the book says, he was "a marvel of vitality" and I forgot how old he was while drawing.  

Bayardo San Roman comes back to Angela, after she spends like half her lifetime writing him a letter every week. The book is filled with jobless people, I tell you!

And finally, the narrator comes back to the village 27 years after the incident, collects bits and pieces of information about the events of that Monday morning from everyone, puts them together in the same haphazard way, and writes a chronicle.

Also, he meets Angela somewhere in the towns of Guajira four years before this (that's 23 years after the incident). She's sitting at a machine doing embroidery (but I drew her knitting, simply because I wanted to) like a sweet old woman. Except she's not, because no one ever found any proof that Santiago Nasar was guilty of what he was accused of, and when her cousin asks what really happened, this is what she says, in her usual cool, rehearsed manner:

So wait, it's quite likely that she got her brothers to kill the wrong guy?!? Go figure!

I'm finally done with this, so I can say it: I now hate everything to do with this book, and I never want to see or hear about it ever again. 

Chronicles of a Death Foretold - Best Synopsis Ever - Part II (The Incident)

Now here's where all the confusion happens. Santiago Nasar wakes up at 05:30 to get ready and greet the Bishop. After being grossed out by the dead rabbits, he leaves the house. It's 06:00, maybe five minutes past, and Pablo and Pedro see him walk out of the main door and get up to kill him.

However, they are dissuaded by Clotilde Armenta who tells them to "leave him for later, if only out of respect for his grace the bishop". So they simply sit around and wait again.

The bishop, not surprisingly, yet to everyone's disappointment, doesn't get off his boat. Just the customary blessing and he's gone.

People disperse. At 06:25, Margot, the narrator's sister, invites Nasar over for breakfast, and he promises to be there in fifteen minutes. He walks purposelessly with Cristo for a little distance and then bids him farewell.

Seconds later, Yamil Shaium tells Cristo about the twins' plan.

Cristo runs off to find his friend, but he has already disappeared. He goes to his house, but Divina Flor, the young maid, tells him Nasar has not come back yet.

The man in demand is, meanwhile, at his fiance Flora Miguel's place, at 06:45. Miguel's family usually sleeps till noon (lucky people, huh?) but woke up really early on this day because of the noise made by the bishop's boat. Flora is upset with Nasar, blah blah blah. Not important. What IS important is that Flora's father, Nahir Miguel (who is a wise old man - the one who orders everyone in the house to sleep until noon) tells Nasar to either stay in the house or exit with a revolver unless he wants to be killed. Nasar who has been blissfully unaware of everything, is shocked to the core.

In the meantime, Cristo feels he should be a good friend and at least prepare Nasar for what might happen. He goes up to his bedroom at 06:56 and a couple of minutes later (at 06:58, since they've mentioned it in the book) he takes Nasar's revolver to hand over to him whenever he is found.

He the heads out and passes by Armenta's shop where Pedro yells out to him to tell Nasar that they're waiting to kill him. Cristo also runs into Colonel Lazaro Aponte again and informs him about the recent developments. Aponte says he'll look into it but isn't too worried as he doubts that the twins will be back with weapons so soon after he took away their knives and told them to go home.

ADD/ADHD much?

Cristo Bedoya is still looking for his friend. He spends some time helping to move Prospero Arango's ailing dad who can't quite walk. Then he goes to Santiago's house again, and this time Divina Flor says she saw him going up to his room from the entrance facing the square.

Incorrect information. Hallucination? Sneaky plot?

Santiago has just received the news of the plot to kill him, and he stumbles out of Miguel's house, unarmed and still dazed. People all around him are shouting instructions and he doesn't know who to listen to.

He sees the twins running towards him and suddenly realizes what is happening. From her angle, his mother Placida Linero looks out the window and sees the twins running to the main door, but doesn't see her son in front of them. After Divina's reassurance that he is in his room upstairs, Linero runs to the door and bolts it so the twins can't go up to her son's room to kill him.

Isn't it ironic?

Linero has locked out her own son, and he is now trapped. Unarmed, he turns around to face his killers. They stab him over and over again, but the knives keep coming out clean and bloodless. That's the beauty of magical realism and supernatural elements...

...but not for long, because after all, they're all human. Poor Nasar is stabbed for what seems like forever, and finally he falls. 

Now comes the creepy part. The "dead" dude stands up and picks up his intestines (which are totally spilling out. Don't even ask about the blood). Then, carrying them in his hands, he walks around the house, goes through the house of his neighbours (weirdos who think he is glowing), walks into his house through the kitchen.   

Then he falls to the floor. Dead. Definitely so this time. And that, my friends, is how the story ends.

Part III is where less important things happen, but it's because of what happens then that the important stuff that happens until now is recorded.  

Chronicles of a Death Foretold - Best Synopsis Ever - Part I (Background)

Bad judgement. That's what made me think, "Wouldn't it be a brilliant idea to go through Chronicles of a Death Foretold, figure out the timeline and the exact order of events, and then tell it in that order with lots of illustrations? It most certainly would!"
It most certainly was NOT, but since I planned it and spent some time putting events on the timeline, I figured I might as well see this through. I've split it into three parts to make it easier (for me).

I declare it's the best synopsis you'll ever find because it has relevant information sifted out and also provides some entertainment. You may argue about the entertainment value, but I bet it's more entertaining than the actual novella. Why didn't I do this before my exam? Would've made going through this befuddling book much easier.

To start at the beginning - Bayardo San Roman marries Angela Vicario and sends her back home a few hours later - some time after midnight - because he discovers she's not a virgin.

I've tried to stay true to the description - San Roman's unbuttoned shirt and pants held up by suspenders, and Angela with the dress in shreds, wrapped in a towel up to her waist.

What a douche, right? Anyway, apparently Angela's been raped, and here's what her mom does: whips her for two hours straight. You'd think a girl would protest, but Angela's too good for that.

All right, maybe she didn't use a whip like that, but that's hardly the point!

After she's whipped for a couple of hours, her twin brothers Pablo and Pedro come back home after a night of revelry and demand to know what happened. It's now a little before 03:00

She's supposed to be sitting on the dining table while the other two are standing. Thus the weird heights. 

Well, the twins decide that they ought to kill Nasar to preserve their family's honour and go off to the butcher's to sharpen their knives, at 03:20. Faustino Santos (the butcher) asks them what they're doing and they tell him their plan.

Santos doesn't quite believe them but thinks he'll let a Leandro Pornoy (a policeman) know, just in case.

Pornoy (*snigger*) tells Colonel Aponte, who takes his own sweet time to get ready with the perfect bow tie for the Bishop, eat his breakfast of fried liver and onion rings, and basically enjoy his lazy morning.

Meanwhile, about five minutes before 04:00, Santiago Nasar, his friend Cristo Bedoya, the unnamed narrator, and the narrator's brother Luis Enrique think it a swell idea to go sing for the newlyweds outside their house. They set off fireworks and rockets from their lawn, singing loudly outside the windows with Enrique on the guitar, oblivious to the fact that Angela has been sent back to her house.

By 04:10, the twins have their knives sharpened and are waiting outside Clotilde Armenta's shop. It's the only shop open at this time, and it's right opposite Nasar's house, so they'll see him when he gets home and finish off the job quickly, or so they hope.

Yeah, Achmed style!

A little later, the merry party of four mentioned above breaks up. Enrique stops by Armenta's shop to buy something and the twins ask him where Nasar is. Looking back, Enrique can't remember what he said because, you know, he's drunk out of his mind, but the twins claim this is what happened:

 Please note that drunk Enrique has a mole on his face ;)

A few minutes after this, at 04:20, Nasar himself is back home and asleep in bed, but the twins don't know that because he takes the back door, and doesn't turn on any lights.

Nasar's dreams = omens of impending doom

Colonel Aponte, while eating breakfast, hears the gossip about Angela from his wife and puts the pieces of the puzzle together.

He then goes to Armenta's store at around 05:00, and after talking to the twins, he takes away their knives.

Armenta tells Aponte to arrest the twins, but he says no one gets arrested on plain suspicion of murder, and Armenta explains:

Important theme - victimization by society and its expectations

But of course, he has to show he's boss and will do whatever he likes, and won't take orders from a mere woman. Little does he know that the twins are debating over getting new knives. Although the murder was originally his idea, Pedro is scared as shit now, so he can't even pee against a tamarind tree in peace (It says so in the book, I kid you not). While he attempts to do his business, his brother Pablo goes to the pig pen and brings out two knives and talks his brother into not giving up.

 Some foreshadowing there. Nasar's fate is sealed.

They stop by Prudencia Cotes' for coffee, and on their way to Armenta's shop again, some woman named Hortensia Baute sees their swords dripping blood and thinks they've already killed Nasar.

Supernatural element, and more foreshadowing. Couldn't decide if she saw the blood through the newspaper the swords were wrapped in, or if she saw no newspaper at all. Thus I leave room for options.

The twins get to Armenta's shop again. The good lady gives them a bottle of rotgut rum, hoping to get them so drunk they won't remember about Nasar. Pedro puts on a random show of machismo by shaving with his butcher's knife (which probably isn't integral to the story in any way, but it's funny)

Really, what is up with these guys?

So now the twins are waiting, and Nasar is up and ready for the bishop. He goes to the kitchen for breakfast and is horrified at the way in which rabbit guts are being pulled out, which is a little strange coming from him because he goes hunting every once in a while.

MORE foreshadowing. It's like Nasar has a strong feeling he'll be in the rabbit's position soon. (Oh, you'll have to imagine the rabbit guts being pulled out, because I didn't have the heart to draw that.)

This is about it until Nasar steps out of his house at 06:05 to greet the Bishop. That happens in the next part.