Transparency and Illusion in Garcia Marquez

Transparency and Illusion in Garcia Marquez' "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"
Author(s): Randolph D. Pope

Source: Latin American Literary Review, Vol. 15, No. 29, The Boom in Retrospect: A
Reconsideration (Jan. - Jun., 1987), pp. 183-200
Published by: Latin American Literary Review
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AND ILLUSION IN
TRANSPARENCY
GARCIA MARQUEZ? CHRONICLE OF A DEATH
FORETOLD
RANDOLPH D. POPE
At first reading, this novella of 1981 by theNobel Prize winner seems
straightforward,
author, Rosario
transparent, and a distinguished

it as a literary fraud.1
has qualified
self-evident,
Puerto Rican
the
Clearly,
reader does not feel an immediate
impulse to turn to an expert nor does the
and engage in deep hermeneutics.
critic believe he must go into overdrive
that can be left at the
The specter arises of a text that needs no commentary,
the
not
find
the roughness,
in
We
do
silence.
closing
contemplative
Ferr?,
It is easy
of criticism.
that justifies the carping and proliferation
line
lore.
The
narrative
to read, interesting,
trivial
local
is never
apparently
even if at times it is briefly diverted.
Our academic
torches,
obscured,
Lezama Lima and
almost exhausted by the obscurity of Borges, Goytisolo,
resistance,
are not needed
Fuentes,
these words:
here.
One
"InGarc?a M?rquez,
critic has expressed
his amazement
in
all of the labyrinth is flooded with
a
what needs explanation:
light."2 On second thought, this is precisely
a
more
than
well
well lit labyrinth
is perversely
urn,
wrought
unsettling
a
we
at
center
find
brutal
murder.
title
when
its
(The
only speaks
especially
of a foretold
awakened
The
death:
this disparity,
our suspicion.)
is indeed
anecdote
Colombian
of Arab
in town,
simple:
beloved
murder/death,
Santiago
already
have
a young, handsome,
resented by some as the rich
Nasar,
by most,
twins
because
they must avenge the loss of
by
She was returned home on the wedding
night because
descent,
is butchered
boy
their sister's honor.
the groom,
Bayardo San Rom?n, discovered

in town knows
Nasar.
Everyone
blamed
should
that she was not a virgin. She

is about to be
that Santiago
and let the

but they stand aside, with few, ineffetive, exceptions,
at their trial, and the groom
The twins are pardoned
tragedy take place.
returns to live with the rejected bride, some seventeen years later.
murdered,
A well lit labyrinth can easily be missed. The relief to the eyes makes
to the mind. No
the question of choices and pattern even more bewildering
a
clues in the polished
surface.
It just looks as a page of new journalism,
a
near
on
in words what took place
clean window
troubled town, replacing
the river.
This
text can be assigned
to the category
of trompe
l'oeil, an art
183
184
Latin American
Literary Review
an ambiguous
If it is to be successful,
has experienced
reception.
the art of the painter of a trompe l'oeil must first be missed,
and we must
see only a pile of books, a used pipe, a violin hanging
from a rusty nail, a
few letters and coins on the wall. William M. Harnett's or Peto's deceptive
which
realismwas slighted by the established critics (even if bought at high prices

even by the academics,
until
it was discovered
clients),
from the frame, invading reality, as the large trumpeter swan
protruding
that created the iUusion of
painted by Pope, uncomfortable
masterpieces
and in so doing cancelled
the consecrated
of art,
conventions
transparency
by delighted
thatwhich made it artful, and hid inmodesty

style,
the canvas
cleansing
even
of
itself,
the work of the artist, his
leaving
no
traces
the
except
plentitude of the recreatedobject.

Garc?aM?rquez* novella disguises its craft in a similarway by claiming
to be something
else: a chronicle.
This statement
an instruction
for reading
the work as if it were a chronicle,
and
hear
other
from
(such as publicity),
suspect
orienting voices
from the title
novel.
the
These
fact
that
constitutes
we
while
that it is a
instructions for reading are further complicated

by
perplexing
come
two meanings
of the word
into play:
historical
and journalistic
reports.
consider
first the historical
descriptions
Let
in a
of events
description
order. Strictly, this procedure
is not followed
inChronicle cf
chronological
a Death Foretold,
of the text we approach,
since in each of the five divisions
us
reach, or surpass
the murder
itself,
so that we have
read about
itmany
times
before it is fully brought into the open in all its gruesome details. With
more
latitude
in the definition,
it is almost
impossible
not to remember
that
the chronicles of the Indies constitute the bases of Latin American writing
and have been read, especially lately and even without the impulse ofWhite
or Danto,
as the literary
place
where
experience,
desire,
imagination,
invention, recycled ideas and cunning met the unchartered reality of the
New
World,
known,
narrating
introducing
American
history
unseen
the previously
a wedge
of incalculable
does not exist
at its origin
in terms
of
the European
Our Latin
consequences.
but as a chronicle,
a seamless
web of truth and fiction tied together by a slender and incoherent lace of
interpretation.
They are texts not to be trusted, many
the urge of correcting
versions.
previous mendacious
of them born out of

Those
who
died
in
search of El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, or the Seven Golden Cities

texts map only the illusions of a crazed or desperate
even if they may sound like information
that can be safely
conquistador,
an
In
followed
this
numbers confer
and confirmed
morass,
by
expedition.
found
out that some
of a Death Foretold
in Chronicle
and Illusion
Transparency
185
a saving grace, an orientation

in nowhere,
an assurance
that even if we do
not know towards where,
at least we are sure we are moving
forward.
Here lies the central importance
of time in ordering
narrative
of all
the
and of Garc?a M?rquez' Chronicle, but with an added dimension.
chronic
and underlines
seal frames
the individual
that he lives in a
chronicles
The
shared human
are dispersed
in a town that has only one
this will soon fade in the memory
of the
Characters
system.
common
and even
time,
certainty:
text of the Chronicle
interviewed
witnesses.
Garc?a M?rquez'
Spanish
stresses this nature of time, since all numbers
stand out among the letters
with the clarity of their cyclic nature from 1 to 12. The English
translator
has
felt
to transform
free
becomes
"five minutes
them
into words:
for example,
"6.05" (10)
remains as "3:20" in the
"3.20"(83)
six"(10),
past
first edition inEnglish (on p. 152 of theMarch 1983 issue ofVanity Fair),
to "three-twenty")(58)
but is mellowed
in the Ballantine
Books
edition
of
1984.3 This is probably a wise editorial decision, but as usual with

a significant
translations,
iconographie
is lost.
interplay
At this point I must make a brief excursus and mention

translation
contains
that may prove

examples
Divina Flor's "el hombre
would
never
had never
nudo
secrets
that the
is in general brilliant
numerous
mistakes.
be hers because
"the man
who
"un
Luisa Santiaga's
(15), obliterating
an encoded
she knew all the
tangle clear to her because
could
never
it reduced
to "a knotty
guess,
Since in the novel the role of women
is of great importance,
error could result inmisguided
inferences:
"My mother paid
to them
any attention
soon die, becomes

the omen;
cifrado"(39),
that an outsider
no attention
he would
hers"
been
problem"(25).
the following
in recreating the tone of the original, but it

I will give only a few of many possible
of the text.
important to the correct understanding
nunca
ser
hab?a de
the man who
que
suyo"(26),
for once
[her children];
to her husband"(25),
in her life she didn't even pay

text tells us that for once
but the Spanish
inher life she did not take care of her children : "Mimadre no les hizo caso,
por una vez
consequences
en la vida,
is the disfiguration
Bayardo San Rom?n:

narrador],
raro como
ni le prest?
cuando
vine
a su esposo"(40).
Of graver
the narrator's
towards
reaction
atenci?n
of
"Lo conoc? poco despu?s que ella [lamadre del

a las vacaciones
tan
y no lo encontr?
as strange as other people
de Navidad
He does not find him

dec?an"(46).
had said he was. Rabassa
"Imet him a short while
translates:
after she did,

and I found him just as strange
as they had said"(30).
In a sentence, Angela's
mother
becomes
Angela
a
"Hondo
out to a
flattens
(51).
desaliento"(76),
complete discouragement,
when
I came home
for Christmas
vacation,
186
Latin American
voice"
"deep, dejected
(52).
The
Literary Review
(87) are amplified
"fiestas patronales"
to
"national holidays" (61), "lo dibuj?" (95) (He drew it, the knife), is
duplicated into "the investigator had made sketches of them" (67). The fear
of
is lost, when
loneliness
translated
version
as "I didn't
Pedro
"No
tuve
have
valor
the courage
usurps the words
Vicario
para dormir
to sleep" (88).
spoken by Pablo
solo" (124) is
In the English
in the
Vicario
original Spanish (92 and 129, respectively). "Y con el cuchillo bast? que ?l
mismo hab?a fabricado con una hoja de segueta" (172) [with the coarse
knife he himself had forged out of the blade of a sickle], is abridged to
"with the naked knife in his hand" (128). Victoria Guzm?n "minti? a
conciencia" (185) [she knew she was lying], becomes inEnglish "she lied
were
There
(137).
honestly"
and the narrator
remarks
one straight, the other curved,

two knives,
that one of the twins used the straight one, the
"with the
the translator to the complicated
recto" (187), prompting
in"
knife pointed straight
(139), and later, when the Spanish reads "estaba a
"cuchillo
la izquierda con el cuchillo curvo" (188), this is sliced into "was on his left"
sentence
is simply left out near the end: "Santiago Nasar la
(139). A whole
reconoci?"
(192), informing us that the mortally wounded Nasar still could
at the other side of the river and had
the narrator's aunt Wenefrida
recognize
to reply to her greeting with "They've k?led me, Wene
child"
the civility
(143). Much is lost in transit.

as
in the Spanish text numbers
stick out as incrustations,
out
in
delimitations.
Garc?a M?rquez
time
brings
The Bad Hours,
One Hundred
Years of
many of the titles of his works:
The
Autumn
the
Love
in
the
Time
the
Cholera,
Solitude,
Patriarch,
of
of
Back
to time:
common
uncontroUable
"Baltazar's
Prodigious
Afternoon,"
"Tuesday's
Siesta,"
etc.
But thewisdom of "Timewill tell" does not apply here. The opposite
is true; time will
event
from
the details
the town
reduce
to silence.
The narrator's
efforts
are to rescue
an
as he tries to flesh out

it has acquired in memory,
to rot, with water invading
of a story that is starting to evaporate,
like
and
and
still circling
with
archives,
memory
language
the leanness
over a death
scavengers
foretold and retold.
that remains
inexplicable,
even
if many
times
is the journalistic
second meaning
of "chronicle"
report, in this
an
a
in the tropics.
the chronicle
education
It is well known fact
of
The
case,
thatGarc?aM?rquez is a professional journalist and he insists that the facts

of his novella
conceded
are historical.
that "reality
In an article
is a better writer
in 1979, he even
published
than we are," and affirmed that there
is no line in any of his books thatdoes not have its origin in something that
Recent
really happened.4
between
similarities
investigations
articles he wrote
some
on the murder
and others
of a Death Foretold
in Chronicle
and Illusion
Transparency
of Wilma
187
the very close

of Pope Pius XII
and Chronicle
of a Death
have
shown
on the visit
Montesi
even for an experienced

a
to
reader: we are not invited
reading of the text. The Pope is
proliferating
the case of the murdered
reduced to a Bishop,
girl has left here only the
trace of an ultimate mystery. What
should be asked is how the connection
was
cleared
interrupted,
narrative world
so
away,
in search
creation
M?rquez'
what we
are not evident,
the connections
But
Foretold.5
that the reader
not
does
escape
the
This aspect, Garcia

connections.
to
than amyth, of a trace that connects
to his
than with what we have read, is peculiar
of
infinite
of an event more
more
experience
and in an oblique way explains
he has made
of journalism
conflations
literature
the rather frequent

and literature.
and bewildering
In an interview
published inDiario 16 (April 28,1981, p. 72), he claims that inChronicle

of a Death
confluence
the perfect
for the first time, he has accomplished
at because
he
aims
and literature,
of journalism
something
to him, helps to keep in contact with reality, essential
according
journalism,
in an article of 1982, assures us that
to the work of literature.
Rabassa,
Foretold,
"has come to the conclusion

Garc?a M?rquez
in
many other ways as well?they
possibly
assesses
the same."6
Rabassa
correctly
in most
technique
who
readers,
authenticity"(49).7
real journalists
But when
came up with mixed
results,
of
the effect
report
"a very
this journalistic
strong
feeling
of
Garc?a M?rquez'
claims,
they
investigated
as Edith Grossman
in her article of
reveals
to her and some

than Fact."8
is Stranger
According
in his youth
the crime that involved Garc?a M?rquez
journalists,
a certain Cayetano
Gentile
in Sucre
and the victim was
"Truth
Review,
Colombian
took
will
that in technique at least?and

are
[literature and journalism]
place
not of Arab
Chimento,
stock.
The
romantic
outsider,
Bayardo
San Rom?n,
was in realityMiguel Reyes Palencia, born in Sucre, a friend of Cayetano

now an insurance agent with 12 children from
Garc?a M?rquez,
and who has seen Margarita
Chica, the woman who became
Chica's
Vicario,
Margarita
only twice since their separation.
and Gabriel
another wife,
Angela
brothers
twins.
were
The murder
insistence
intensifies
question
called Victor
was
committed
on the underlying
the transparency
why
Manuel
and Jos? Joaqu?n, and they were not

by only one of them. Garc?a M?rquez'
historical
effect.
the author gave
The
for his narrative
is a ruse that
reader does not need
to constantly
placed him in
bases
such a character
such a name,
188
such
Latin American
a situation:
is so because
it just
it was
so and there
a book,
futher elucidation.
for autobiographies,
as Philippe
a pact between
Reading
establishes
Literary Review
is no need
for
shown
Lejeune has clearly

the narrator/author
and the
reader as to the level of truth thatwill be granted to the story? In terms of

as readers we establish
as soon as possible
the sort of statement
Foucault,
are confronted with and proceed accordingly.10
In Chronicle cfa Death
the reader is led up the garden path, but then, once he or she
Foretold,
we
discovers
the text
that
is not
a true chronicle,
the situation
acquires
viscosity between the solid facts of history and thefree flow of fiction. So
is referring to well known aspects of reality: the name of the narrator
and his wife,
the general outline of the case. The journalistic
chronicle has
been adulterated,
shot through by literature, and in the many perforations
to the event is where the critic
where the artist carved his own modifications
much
comes
looks
into action, made

like an empty pipe,
cautious
a recently
by the scattered remnants of what still

but this is
played flute, burnt matches:
not a pipe.
There are examples of the difficulty of reading in the novella itself: the
we read that
the very beginning
a
of
timber
trees, and he
grove
going through
was happy while he dreamed,
but when he awoke he felt spattered with
in town as an interpretor of
bird shit. Santiago's mother, who
is famous
this crucial one. The omen is not understood.
dreams, misinterprets
We,
interpretations
has
Santiago
the readers,
and omens.
of dreams
At
seen himself
are told
that Santiago's
in order for the dream
is warning
subconscious
him
of the
an omen itmust be missed,

to become
But
danger.
seen
as
nail
from
the
wall is successful
the
protruding
just
painted
only if
tries to hang a hat from it. The present is visited in prophetic
first someone
dreams by the future, but the future is in disguise. The complexity of the
of premonition
lies in the fact that if the dream is a warning
of
to
will
and
it
is
then
it
that
be
be
avoided,
avoided,
prove
may
something
or not acted upon, only the murder of
If it is not clearly understood,
false.
language
the young man, the drop of the hat to the floor, will prove the truth of the
matter,
the exact
of things. Once the tragedy happens,

but with a duplication
bordering
relation
as a dark mirror,
reviewed
which hides its true meaning
in order
the narrator
knows,
writing
but in a language
written,
deeper
premonitions
is constantly
that it be confirmed.
knows
the dream
is
in duplicity,
The Other I, the
and we
is
Life
get to know.
and the surface of these
of displacement,
misunderstood
by the characters.
We
are told
that Pl?cida Linero "never forgave herself for having mixed up the
magnificant augury of treeswith the unlucky one of birds"(l 15). It claimed
of a Death Foretold
in Chronicle
and Illusion
Transparency
189
a sixth sense from his mother

that Santiago
had inherited
(6), but he
to the "sediment of copper stirrup on his palate"(2),
attaches no significance
Mother
and son fail as
the penetrated,
useless
stirrup of red copper.
Also
readers.
is not up to the task:

Luisa Santiaga,
in the
the throbs of the tragedy" (129). There are warnings
"until he was carved
as readers may miss a first time around:
the narrator's mother,
"she didn't feel

text that we
up like a pig"(2) will be amuch more literal statement thanwhat our training
"the
We may or may not miss other omens:
lead us to expect.
to
the
thrown
the
innards
rabbits'
the
many
smell"(5),
dogs,
baptistery
its
In short: there is a writing
in this event that foretells
roosters crowing.
would
culmination,
demands
it is a scribbling
of human
the complicity
hard
but
to unscramble,
in order
blindness
it actually
to reach its own
and
is definitely not transparent for the characters, even if it

fulfillment.
Reality
San
that Bayardo
ascertains
Nasar
is foretold.
Ironically,
Santiago
cost
as
to
in
was
the
it
referred
inasmuch
Roman's
correct,
prediction
of his wedding.
money
Blindness
and insight,
as two directions
lit labyrinth.
The
investigating
notes
marginal
a reader of Nietzsche
magistrate,
in the incessant quest for origins and motives,
in the well
to
and given
has a right
to
be "perplexedby the enigma thatfate had touched him with"(l 16), since the
most
Much
the brand of the perpetrator.

ismissing:
frequent supernatural writing
will become more or less clear, "except for one item that would never
up: who was
be cleared
the real cause
of her damage,
and how
and why,
because no one believed that ithad really been Santiago Nasar" (103). This
does not mean,
of course,
was
as has been
when
was,
infer from the text that Nasar
proclaimed
visits Angela many
asked her
When
the magistrate
Angela
answers:
"Fue mi
as "He was my perpetrator"(117).

one we could also
expression,
expression
del crimen,"
safely
In fact,
by several reviewers.11
years later she insists that "He was
innocent,
the narrator
the one"(104).
Nasar
that we may
comes
from
probably
but "my author"?
if she knew who
autor"(160);
We have here
translate
"he was
Santiago
this in English
appears
an extremely
unlikely
as "He was my author."
(The
the author of the crime",
Can we find here an allusion
"el autor
to the fact that
perhaps Gabriel himself was to blame for the fateful deflowering, or that
"c'est moi"?)
the writing
frame of time and the tug between
creates
and misinterpretations,
stubbornness
blindness,
Santiago
The
difference
therefore
Nasar
between
no space
of fate and human

a world
where
the
is insignificant,
and happening
leaving
foretelling
for liberty. Once we open up the text to the many codes
190
Latin American
where
Literary Review
is registered, more overdeterminations

spring up. The
to comply with it is bloody
crossroads:
is one of the engraved
would mean
ostracism
and
its demands
but not to follow
the action
honor
code
and cruel,
No one is able to "spare those poor boys from the horrible duty
contempt.
and
that's fallen on them"(65).
There are also several literary paradigms
that has
indicate that this event only repeats something
references which
happened before. From Greek tragedy (and thefrightened Hector running

to escape from Achilles),
to the passion of Christ.12
around Troy wishing
all
article of reconstructing
But, as Arnold Penuel has put it in his model
the
bullet
intertextual
Garc?a
mechanisms,
away
M?rquez
possible
keeps
is my central thesis and my reading is opposite
but
from the gun. This
to that of Penuel:
complementary
Sophocles,
in the tropical word
suffocated
of Garc?a
as
and then rejected
symposium
insignificant,
Petronius,
and St. John are
to the
invited
M?rquez,
as
arrives with
just
Borges
his mirrors and labyrinths and hypallage adiectivi only to be hidden under
the apostolical
two
possible
themselves.
dress of Mar?a Alejandra Cervantes.

This is the secret of the
that
have
divided
sometimes
critics,
readings
against
one
as
in Garc?a M?rquez,
On the
abounds
side, repetition
by his
evidenced
that in Latin America
insistence
arrives late:
everything
a
to
It is mistake
of the earth, genesis.
of the roundness
ice, the discovery
One
Hundred
Years of Solitude
qualify
as a foundational myth, because

the
not
book is
about origin but about repetition and postponement.
From the
are
we
of
this
book
that
told
that
there was
itself,
very beginning
duplicates
a precedent of incest in the Buendia
that
the result also then had
family, and
been
a child with
a pig's
tail. A
lucid critic
Josefina
Ludmer,
"Lo
writes:
primordial semuestra como posibilidad de retroceso indefinido: el origen

no
es un verdadero
origen,
es
repetici?n,
el narrador
lo toma
en un
en que ya repite algo" ["The primordial

is shown as the possibility
a
not
true
is
of unending
the
it is repretition,
regression:
origin
origin,
narrator takes over already to tell us that something
is repeating
itself'].13
or supernational,
The sweep of Time,
the subconscious
honor codes,
momento
all affect the characters,

their
literary paradigms,
reducing their originality,
are
to
sentences
choice of how to exist.
reduced
They
already written.
Nasar's
Vividly,
death
"She nailed
Angela:
in a word by
is frozen
(as the man of Nazareth's),
it [Santiago's name] to the wall with her well-aimed
sentence
with no will whose
has always
been
a butterfly
One of the twins ponders:
written"(53).
dart,
like
It's as if it had already happened"(70).

Bruguera
Spanish
edition,
the reader
"There
is no way
out of this
...
Indeed, in the cover flap of the
is informed
that "Tema central
en la
and Illusion
Transparency
narrativa
de Garc?a M?rquez,
indiscutida,
protagonista
desdichada
of a Death Foretold
in Chronicle
como
aqu? finalmente
met?fora
de la insensata
suprema
y
["The central theme in Garc?a M?rquez'
la fatalidad
como
vida de los hombres"
191
aparece
appears here at last as the indisputable main protagonist,

as supreme metaphor
of the foolish and unhappy
lives of human beings"].
Are we then confronted
the
by
paradigmatic
archetypal)
(cryptic ominous
narrative,
fatality
writing followed by its foretold event that then fades into the pages of
journalistic of artisticwriting? Is this the cyclic world of underdevelopment
described byMaldonado Denis speaking of The Autumn of thePatriarch ?:
"Una de las m?s
lacras del subdesarrollo:

el car?cter estancado,
persistentes
de los pueblo que lo padecen"
c?clico, de la historia
["One of the most
of
is this:
shameful
characteristics
the
persistent
underdevelopment
that suffer under
stagnant, cyclic nature of the history of those countries
in his review of
this justify Cornejo
Polar's
conclusion
it"].14 Does
to the effect that it is a relatively superfluous
Chronicle of a Death Foretold,
in
written
ludic
since?he
on?we,
work,
goes
just
superficiality
have
Latinamericans,
for a long time that Destiny

is nothing
we
of power?15
Can
see, with Hern?n Vidal,
known
than the ideologization

One Hundred
Years of Solitude
represents
else
that
the failure of the liberal capitalist
political project, or detect in all of Garc?aM?rquez' works the pessimism

well brought out by Rodriguez Luis?16 I wrote myself, in 1975, that
to a true future had
openness
to be
the test for novels
to be
that claimed
in a revolutionary
and that repetition and the abolition
grounded
ideology,
of time reflected only the partial experience
of some classes and countries in
as "lo latinoamericano."17
Does
falsely postulated
we
on
a
to
fail the test? Do
have
focus
greater human
Latin America,
Garcia
M?rquez
tragedy,
being played out at a continental level, as it has been described by Angel

Rama?:
"Vemos
la presencia
las grandes
fuerzas
de
equ?voca,
determinado
sutil,
que
witness
soterrada,
contradictoria,
est?n moviendo
la historia
hasta
de un
the subtle
hidden,
presence,
of the great forces that move history at a
is this presence made manifest,
and how is
a
If their Parnassian
it contradictory?
is
among the
activity
tug-of-war
a
to
desacralized
what
at
does
character have left
the left)?
say (even
gods,
of
such
Or, finally, do we reach for a more saussurean
determination,
type
["We
tiempo"
even
ambiguous,
contradictory,
determined
time"].18 But, how
as this one proposed

Mimetic
between
one
by Culler
explaining
deconstruction?:
can be regarded as intertextual:

relations
a
and
another
rather
than
between
representation
relations
192
Latin American
textual
and a nontextual
imitation
of an origin,
the
of a manifestation
plenitude
dependency
that assert
Texts
original.
uniqueness
or derivation
Literary Review
an original,
of an imitation,
of
the
the
may
reveal that the original is already an imitation and that everything

begins
But
with
were
reproduction.19
all of
this
true,
that
we find only
M?rquez
of a true novum, the pristine
in Garc?a
then there would be an obstruction

repetition,
as our true home,
future that Ernst Bloch
recognized
curious
attitude
in transformation
be a
and this would
a believer
the close friend of Torrijos,

for Garc?a M?rquez,
and political change, a writer who selected Fidel Castro
as
... There
the first reader of the manuscript
ofChronicle
of a Death Foretold
since many
could be a gap between
the artist's declaration
and his writing,
world.
critics find in reiteration and stagnation
the clue to Garc?a M?rquez'
Alfred Mac Adam writes about One Hundred Years of Solitude : "Why
begin
and end
the history
of Macondo
with
an act of incest?
and difference.
between
may lie in the relationship
repetition
seems to envision
the world he represents
and Garc?a M?rquez
The
answer
In a world,
in this way,
cannot
it
of
life
the
mode
is
being,
develop because
only
repetition
one of the most brilliant
has no place to grow."20 And Josefina Ludmer,
in which
Years of Solitude writes:

y creencias populares
critics of One Hundred

las supersticiones
todas las predicciones
todas
"En Cien a?os de soledad

se transforman
en realidad;
se cumplen"
Years of Solitude aU
["In One Hundred
come to
all
become
and
beliefs
reality;
predictions
popular
superstitions
a
is such a keen critic that he budges
But just as MacAdam
pass"].21
of
of
his
lack
definite
assertation
("the
certainty
signs
by intercalating
seems to envision"),
answer way lie", "Garc?a M?rquez
Josefina Ludmer
on
same
on
"El
to
the
narrador
de Cien a?os
herself
contradict
page:
goes
con este tipo de posibilidades;
las muertes
anunciadas
juega constantemente
son maduros,
los ni?os
los locos
inesperadas;
no se
no acontecen;
los objetos buscados
los hechos
l?cidos;
esperados
narrator
of
One
Hundred
Years
encuentran"
["The
plays constantly with
ones
foretold deaths do not happen, unexpected
this sort of possibilities;
no ocurren,
acaecen
do; children
are mature,
the objects searched

Carmen Arnau goes
en la predestinaci?n
las
madmen
after never
lucid; expected
appear"]. These
do not take place;

are not isolated instances.
events
cree firmemente
as far as to state that "Garc?a M?rquez
en todas las partes del mundo"
de todos los hombres
["Garc?a
M?rquez believes firmly in the predestination of all human beings
everywhere
in the world"],
even
if she
is forced
later
in her book
to
and Illusion
Transparency
of a Death Foretold
in Chronicle
193
esta novela parece ser el Universo

de
that "para los hombres
no hay ning?n camino preestablecido,
todo parece posible,
se hace el suyo propio a medida
de sus deseos, no hay ning?n
acknowledge
la posibilidad,
cada cual
seems
to be the Universe
of
this novel
["for men
one
no
seems
fixed
there
is
each
road,
possible,
anything
own according
to the measure
there is no
of his desires,
condicionamiento"
possibility,
his
makes
in Garcia
These
reflect a radical ambiguity
critics
conditioning"].22
texts that we have explored up to now in the hesitation
between
M?rquez'
of course, is
novel and chronicle,
between fiction and history. Ambiguity,
at the antipodes of repetition, since it is at once two but never any one of the
two.
is
character of Chronicle
of a Death Foretold
ambiguous
not
She
hide
the
with
unfortunate
she does
truth,
consequences.
Angela:
is lost, the hymen
She could
does not pretend; her virginity
is broken.
The
least
the missing
resentful
quality, but she is probably
easily have counterfeited
to the best bidder. What
at having been handed over as merchandise
she
lacks is the ultimate
in all its value
there only to be taken and shining

of its destruction;
but the absence
is telling,
art?culo de consumo,
at the moment
the vacant
the lover. Bayardo

does
re-remembers
space intolerably
on his wedding
not make a mistake
night, or at least not in the facts. He
not given.
must proceed from what
and
And all seems then to
is given
march down the last one-lane
stretch of the labyrinth.
since
the mistakes
of the characters seem to
There may be an opening. While
is
the language of the narration
represent what the writing has rehearsed,
and
studded by unexpected
creative jumps that sparkle in a characteristic
disturbing Garc?a M?rquez
style. One way
the reader
evident misnomer
that forces
otherwise,
to engage
unpredictable,
example, Divina
in interpretation.
at least in Chronicle.
unforetold,
Flor's
vision:
"through
is as an
a metaphor
to define
to change
And
they
read
register
are unnecessary,
Here
the half-open
and
we
door
for
have,
she saw the
almond trees on the square, snowy [?levados]in the light of the dawn" (14),
awonderfully incorrect perception in the tropics. The rigor of logic would
object to the following
couldn't stand the noise
"skin was so delicate

Santiago's
of starch" (5). Let me insist: this is more
sentence:
that it
than a
question of style, it is the half-open door of the unpredictable that, Iwill

in Garc?a M?rquez'
lost in the translation, when someone
show,
is essential
creative world.
visits Bayardo's
it is
Pity, then, when
house and the rooms
"were lighted by the traces of the eclipse" (97), when the Spanish text
reads: "los cuartos iluminados por los rescoldos del eclipse" (135), lit by
194
the
Latin American
last
embers
the eclipse.
of the author enjoying
perpetrator,
of
These
are
embers
his freedom
from
Literary Review
the brand
of
the
the sun of logic,
the
generation of the new by his sidestepping from thewell lit labyrinth.

Garc?a M?rquez
has stressed repeatedly the importance
imagination has
in transforming
the world:
"Acu?rdate que la gran mayor?a de las cosas de
este mundo,
desde
las cucharas
hasta
los transplantes
del coraz?n,
en la imaginaci?n
antes de estar en la realidad.
de los hombres
estuvieron
El socialismo
Uni?n
estuvo
Sovi?tica...
en la imaginaci?n
de Carlos Marx antes de estar en la
o
tarde
temprano, la realidad termina por darle la raz?n
a la imaginaci?n" ["Remember that the great majority of things in this

of
spoons to heart transplants, were first in the imagination
was
in
then
first
Karl
Marx
Socialism
beings
reality.
imagined by
sooner or later, reality ends up by
it appeared in the Soviet Union...
from
world,
human
before
agreeing with imagination"].23 This is our first important discovery: for

Garc?aM?rquez, freedom is found in imagination, because there thehuman
can go beyond
being
whatever
history
and literature,
anticipating
it, since eventually
is new will end up swallowed up by the discourses of the
and the imagined.

experienced
a problem
at the
We must complicate matters
further by investigating
in
anecdotal level of Chronicle,
letters.
One
letter, predicting
concerning
detail Santiago's death, is left unopened
thousands of letters written by Angela
and unread until after the crime;

to Bayardo
are never
the
The
opened.
is traditional,
literary, but the latter surprise the reader. In search
for clues one can read an article published
inMagazine
litt?raire
that has to
a fabrication
as
be considered
candid
Garcia
revelations.24
disguised
first one
M?rquez affirms here thathe had not been able towrite Chronicle because
he had not been able to invent a convincing and appropriate end. Ifwe look
at the text, the end appears to be Santiago's falling dead on the kitchen floor
innards had been eaten by the dogs only a few hours
thus all predictions,
But
and codes would be fulfilled.
omens,
the end
Garc?a M?rquez
writes
inMagazine Litt?raire that what he considers
the rabbits'
where
before:
was penned by reality: a friend of his reported to him that Santiago Nasar
to be pure invention,
(This appears
Angela.
event
him understand,
made
This
article.)
according
alleged
return of
he claims,
that this is a story of love, and that the marginal
to
center
real
be
would
the
of
the
story.
Santiago
Angela
Let us follow this lead for amoment,
but noting first the extreme care
had
returned
to live with
to the Review
that Garc?a M?rquez

bookish
tradition.
has taken to root his love story in an event and not in a

In fact, in Chronicle we are told that "for the immense
Transparency
of people
majority
in Chronicle
and Illusion
there was
of a Death Foretold
only one victim:
Bayardo
195
San Rom?n.
They
took it for granted that the other actors in the tragedyhad been fufiUingwith
and even with
dignity,
a certain
grandeur,
their part of the destiny
that life
had assigned them"(96). San Rom?n (the pilgrim toRome?) is the outsider
(much asMelqu?ades was inOne Hundred Years of Solitude): he does not
an assigned part, and he does not fit easily into the town stereotypes
One reviewer
his sexual identity is questioned.
since from the beginning
have
reaches the following unfounded deduction: "It is licit to inferfrom reading

that he
the novel
on the wedding
night not so much
a virgin, but more because
his own sexual
... We find a character who is of the
inclinations
returned
he did not find
because
had other
preferences
that Bayardo
opinion
his wife
her
'seemed
gay'
and who
seems
one
is one,
as the
saying goes."25 Of course, this is not a licit inference, and Angela

on the
of Bayardo's
and pleasing memories
performance
kept burning
wedding
night, but the snide remark of the critic and the gossip in town are
Spanish
fitting,
since Bayardo
is the man without
a role, forgotten
by everyone
on
the day of the crime, so it is only days later that they think of looking him
is the
of fate, Bayardo
up. In a book so burdened down by the sentencing
odd man out, the dweller of the margin.
of placing
this standpoint,
From
from this apparent
afterthought
at
center
and
from
of
the
the
and
narration,
t?strompe l'oeil
Angela
Bayardo
we must
it happened,
is there only because
that this episode
the
with the odd, the unexpected,
fascination
Garc?a M?rquez'
In his speech of acceptance
of the Nobel Prize, he
strange, and the unique.
for
is unbelievable,
instances in which Latin America
underscored
the many
affirmation
reexamine
should not be explained

This uniqueness
it is unprecedented.26
away by
or
lo
maravilloso.
This is
realism
real
clich?
of
the
tired
magical
applying
not an exotic fringe, but the center itself where
the unexpected
is possible,
This
where previous writing collapses,
gaping for a word as yet inexistent.
is the space of liberty.
if, because of this, the circus is for Garcia
(I wonder
a symbol of rebellion and life: a form of art that is transient, that
M?rquez
So
aims to amaze and fire the imagination with facts and not with writing.)
a fact, and this telling, straight and with no
must become
the unexpected
exclamation
learned
marks,
he has
that reports what people believe has happened,
is the intertextual
What must be shortcircuited
from journalism.27
proliferation thatwill always keep us with ourminds fixed inwhat has been
the
the uniqueness
of the life sparkling
while
put into sentences,
about why
connections
is ignored or abstracted.
(We are still concerned
196
Latin American
Bay ardo never

delayed.)
These
those
opened
considerations
is aman
M?rquez
a man
"was aman
understand
against books,
because
obscure
solution
must
be
Garcia
termed
event
the present
they
does exist.
with
the past. Time

The investigating magistrate
with
the
fever
of
literature"
(116) and could, therefore,
burning
little of what he had to witness.
His theories, as his improper
do not fit the life of the town.
clothes,
the offered
us to an unexpected
conclusion:
as
Cervantes
could have been
just
bring
books,
against
from
formulations
but
letters,
Literary Review
In this sense, Marlise
seen correctly when she called Garc?a M?rquez

looks on theory as an enemy."28
It is precisely
that brings about
hastily Melqu?ades'
writing,
In Garc?a M?rquez'
about literature.
Simons
an "anti-intellectual...
a book,
reading
the destruction
own works
no one praises
him with
compares
he
deciphering
of Macondo.
a great
written
ado
a doctor seeped in European

culture
of the Cholera,
to want to take over as the main character gets brushed
and
If one
books
or makes
has
the palimpsests
the difference
by
is clear and
Cort?zar,
Carpentier,
In an interview
for El Pa?s,
the startled conclusion
of the
stunning.
interviewers was that what least interested Garc?a M?rquez was literature.29
are not frequent characters
in his books, and in his latest novel,
Intellectuals
and Fuentes,
Borges,
in the Time
Love
who
appears
soon enough when he dies after falling while
trying
a parrot he has taught how
tree his best companion,
off
to bring down from a

to speak French.
The
investigating judge inChroncle is dumbfounded because he fails to admit

that there may be in life a residual
such fatal coincidences.
understand
must
from Riohacha
impulse
to give
have
sensed
them a rational
element
of absurdity:
The
investigating
them without
daring
explanation
was
obvious
"No one could

judge who came
to admit it, for his
in his report"(l
1).
But he relegates to the margins of his brief exasperated notes and the
of a heart pierced by an arrow, cutting into the consistency
of the
and
how
and
it
is.
report
showing
incomplete
unsatisfactory
a book-pusher,
a seller
narrator
The
himself
has become
of
drawing
where
encyclopedias,
supposedly
"in the course
found. Nevertheless,
he
[Gabriel]
mission
recovered
all
information
in the world
of the investigations
can be
for this chronicle
numerous
The intro
marginal
experiences"(48).
element
that proves central is seen in
marginal
of this inexplicable
if Santiago
"left by the door on the square ... itwas for such
reason that the investigator who drew up the brief never did
understand
and Rulfo are not proliferators
of
it"(57). Only Garc?a M?rquez
the writers
of the "boom."
But while Rulfo
is
among
literary allusions
other quotes:
an unforeseen
and Illusion
Transparency
in Chronicle
of a Death Foretold
197
from literature to the point of silence and death, Garc?a M?rquez

a deep anxiety, a fear of writing
that leads him to cover up all the
clues that may make him guilty of flagrant
and
intertextuality.
Orginality
true life is impossible when
it is only a repetition of the past, of a past that
removed
reveals
must
Ifmemory
of other masterpieces
is unavoidable,
then
characters from his friends' books and show them "alive" in
be left behind.
rescue
he will
his narrative
world.
In One Hundred
Years
and Cort?zar
novels
by Fuentes,
Carpentier,
same world as the Buendias.
This would
not open
the letters,
Angela's
writing,
return and forgive
absurb,
flawed,
precisely
because
he
is gained
characters
from
of Solitude
are debooked
and roam the
also explain why Bayardo

does
over by the vigorous
action of
or purple prose.
and not by reasoning
The impulse to
an
to
stems
be
from
(and accept
forgiven)
unpredictable,
but still magnificently
human
love, that is told
impulse,
because
it can never
be foretold.
She has
restored
her own
and he respects that seal. She has broken away

virginity
by her writing,
from her mother,
and not repeated her mistakes:
with her pen and her
she has created her own self, an absurd result perhaps to
sewing machine
the townsfolk, but an important step forward in the liberation of women
and
men in Latin America.
The friends of the narrator keep on talking about the
mystery,
"trying to give order to the chain of many chance events that had
made absurdity possible,"
"none of us could go on living
precisely because
an exact knowledge
to us by
without
of the place and the mission
assigned
fate" (113). At the margin,
then, the central character and event: Angela
Vicario,
"mistress
of her
fate
for the first
time"(108),
after over
2,000
letters.
unopened
narrative voice stretches over the disquiet of falling
Garc?a M?rquez'
to remain a voice, a chronicle
into books,
in time, refusing the
struggling
not
a
to
is
of
literature.
This
told
the
for his
dream,
immortality
psychiatrist
as their own:
it is a story townfolk
it is not Bosch
interpretation,
recognize
or Dal?, but Hamett
and Chagall.
This does not mean
that his work
is a
celebration
the irrational can be as written, as
of the naive or the irrational:
as the rational, and the naive as repeated as the sophisticated.
prescribed,
to perplex a judge, a critic, created to destroy the "dime
But it is a writing
novel title" the judge attaches to the door to the square: "The Fatal
It is intended to push reality out from under the weight of
Door"(ll).
to bring the picture out of the frame, to give us atrompe
words,
a celebration
of what
in life, requiring
is absurd and unique
creative energy, a capacity for pleasure, and courage.
l'oeil.
a burst
It is
of
198
Latin American
He will
not, of course,
in the effort
to block
produce
a literature
that escapes
Literary Review
but
precedence,
to true reportable
by constant reference
intertextuality
in his texts the will to be a voice devoid
of letters.
The
events,
he inscribes
reader,
if he is not to be torn by hesitation, must adopt a listener's attitude,

and accept for an instant the illusion of a world that is voiced
not a reader's,
in a jubilant affirmation
of the human voice and ear, of the
and emerging
of
the
and
the
listener, not the eye/I of print, but the we,
presence
speaker
A circle, nevertheless,
that is
circle.
the use of the gossipy
storyteller's
conscious
of
its
as soon as
and dispersal,
fragmentation
claims our attention with
stale and today's heading
imminent
news grow
yesterday's
the surprising fact that true history
goes
on and does exist.
Washington University
NOTES
1
en
Ferr?'s opinion is quoted by Carmen Rabell in Periodismo yficci?n
"
del Mait?n,
"Cr?nica de una muerte anunciada
1985),
(Santiago: Monograf?as
p. 13. As will be seen by the reader who finishes this study, I believe Ferr? may
be, only in a certain way, right. It should be clear from the start that I consider
and the term "fraud" is accepted only devoid of its usual
Cr?nica a masterpiece,
negative connotations.
2
Crist?bal Sarrias, "Garc?aM?rquez, Premio Nobel," Raz?n y Fe, 206,
Nr. 1013 (December 1982), p. 456, my translation. He goes on to say that this
narrative transparency is the most important quality in Garc?a M?rquez' work, p.
457.
3
The editions I will be quoting from are the following:

for the Spanish
translation by Gregory
1981; for the English
original, Barcelona:
Bruguera,
Ballantine
1984. The Vanity Fair edition is
Rabassa, New York:
Books,
The Ballantine Books edition has
illustrated brilliantly by Femando Botero.
some drawings by Paul Giovanopoulos.
4
Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez,

"Fantas?a y creaci?n art?stica en America
Latina y el Caribe," Texto Cr?tico, 14 (1979), 3-8, quote in p. 8.
5
See Rabell, pp. 17-21.
6
or
New Book:
Literature
"Garc?a M?rquez'
Rabassa,
Gregory
Journalism," WLT, 56, 1 (1982), 48-51, quote on page 51. He then goes on to
the mystifying
formula "Here fiction is treated like fact treated like fiction"(49),
I do understand him correctly?is
that I suspect?if
very perceptive.
7
Another reviewer confesses
that the impression she had when she read
the narration was that the events had taken place.
See Adelaida L?pez de
in Chasqui,
Mart?nez' review of Cr?nica
10 (1981), p. 72. Victoria F. Chase
en Los funerales de laMama
analyses another "chronicle" in "(De)mitificaci?n
Transparency
Grande"
formula:
and Illusion
in Chronicle
of a Death Foretold
199
Texto Cr?tico, 16-17 (1980), 233-247, and also arrives to a paradoxical

"Una historia verdadera de una (aparente) mentira" (233).
See also, for

30 (September-December
Review,
1981), 71-73.
information, Rabell, pp. 67-68.
complementary
9
en France
in his L'Autobiographie
(Paris: Colin,
Philippe Lejeune
in
and
Le
Pacte
later
1971),
Autobiographique.
10 Most of
du Savoir
19679), is
(Paris: Gallimard,
L'Arch?ologie
that are active in discourse and allow a
dedicated to exploring the mechanisms
delimitation of how a reader confers and excludes meaning.
11 Adelaida
"It takes more courage
L?pez de Mart?nez in Chasqui writes:
and a stronger mettle to defy social pressures than to kill a man. The event is
worse in this case, because it is evident that the sacrificed victim was innocent
affirms in "Le yeux du mage,"
and that the killers knew it." Albert Bensoussans
No.
178
Litt?raire,
1981),
p. 32, that the novel is about
(November
Magazine
"L'in?luctable destin accable des les premieres pages un beau jeune homme
innocent promis a la mort sur la d?nonciation fallacieuse d'une femme r?pudi?e
au soir de ses noces." Paul Alexandreu Georgescu,
in "Garc?a M?rquez y la
de la novela," Correo de los Andes (Bogot?), 13 (January-February
metamorfosis
and that the guilt is
1982), 30-32, believes that the crime took place inMacondo
"inexistente"(32).
12 These are references to two of the best studies about the novella:
Angel
entre la tragedia y la policial o cr?nica y pesquisa de
Rama, "Garc?aM?rquez
13 (1982), 1-27, and the superb
Cr?nica de una muerte anunciada," Sin Nombre,
article by Arnold M. Penuel, "The Sleep of Vital Reason in Garc?a M?rquez'
Cr?nica de una muerte anunciada," Hispania, 68 (December 1985), 753-766.
13
Tiempo
14
Ludmer, Cien
Contempor?neo,
a?os de soledad:
1972), p. 42.
Una
interpretaci?n
(Buenos Aires:
un
"La violencia del subdesarrollo y el subdesarrollo de la violencia:
an?lisis de El oto?o del patriarca de Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez," CASA, 16, No. 98
(1976), 24-35, quote on page 24.
15 Revista
de Cr?tica Literaria
Latinoamericana,
7, No.
13 (1981),
140
142.
16 Julio
Entre
Luis, La literatura
Rodr?guez
hispanoamericana:
a
dedicates
whole
y
compromiso
experimento (Madrid: Espiral, 1984),
chapter
to this aspect, "Garc?aM?rquez:
compromiso y alienaci?n," 201-231, where he
expands, correctly to my mind, on Vidal's limited, but perceptive, opinion.
17 "La
apertura al futuro: Una categor?a para el an?lisis de la novela
hispanoamericana
contempor?nea," RI, 41, No. 90 (1975), 15-28.
18 Diez
(Caracas: S?ntesis
problemas para el novelista latinoamericana
was
This
68.
Dosmil,
essay
p.
1972),
previously published in CASA, No. 26
1964).
(October-November
19 Jonathan
Culler, On Deconstruction
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1982), p. 187.
200 Latin American LiteraryReview

20 Modern
Latin American Narratives

(Chicago:
Press, 1977), p. 86.
21
Ludmer, 106-107.
22 El mundo m?tico de Gabriel Garc?a
M?rquez
1975), pp. 20 and 121.
University
of Chicago
(Barcelona:
Pen?nsula,
23 Armando
con Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez,"
in
Duran, "Conversaciones
Sobre Garc?a M?rquez,
selection by Pedro Sim?n Mart?nez
(Montevideo:
in
Marcha,
1971), 31-31, quote on page 38. This is an interview made
Barcelona in 1968.
24
Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez,
"Le r?cit du r?cit," ML,
Adelaida
p. 71.
178 (November
1981),
33-35.
25
L?pez Mart?nez,
26
For an English
version of the speech, see The New York Times,
Sunday, February 6,1983.
27 This is what Garc?a
tells Marlise
Simons in "A Talk with
M?rquez
Gabriel Garc?a M?rquez,"
The New York Times Book Review
(December 5,
1982), p. 60: "I read a lot from James Joyce and Erskine Caldwell and of course
But the tricks you need to transform something which appears
from Hemingway.
into something plausible, credible, those I learned from
fantastic, unbelievable
...
The
It is done by reporters and by
journalism
key is to tell it straight.
country
folk."
28
In the interview quoted
29
"Rosas para todos," El Pa?s Semanal, Nr.
in the previous
note, p. 61.
137 (November
25,1979),
17.
p.

Transparency and Illusion in Garcia Marquez

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What is the article about?

What is the article about?

What is the author's main argument?

What is the author's main argument?

Transparency and Illusion in Garcia Marquez' "Chronicle of a Death Foretold"

Author(s): Randolph D. Pope

transparent, and a distinguished

are not needed

critic has expressed

all of the labyrinth is flooded with

Bayardo San Rom?n, discovered

that she was not a virgin. She

and let the

text can be assigned

realismwas slighted by the established critics (even if bought at high prices

thatwhich made it artful, and hid inmodesty

the work of the artist, his

plentitude of the recreatedobject.

from the title

instructions for reading are further complicated

does not exist

of them born out of

search of El Dorado, the Fountain of Youth, or the Seven Golden Cities

out that some

a saving grace, an orientation

1984.3 This is probably a wise editorial decision, but as usual with

At this point I must make a brief excursus and mention

that may prove

soon die, becomes

in recreating the tone of the original, but it

in her life she didn't even pay

but the Spanish

Bayardo San Rom?n:

"Lo conoc? poco despu?s que ella [lamadre del

He does not find him

after she did,

(87) are amplified

one straight, the other curved,

(143). Much is lost in transit.

as he tries to flesh out

thatGarc?aM?rquez is a professional journalist and he insists that the facts

the very close

even for an experienced

are not evident,

that the reader

This aspect, Garcia

the rather frequent

published inDiario 16 (April 28,1981, p. 72), he claims that inChronicle

"has come to the conclusion

to her and some

that in technique at least?and

was in realityMiguel Reyes Palencia, born in Sucre, a friend of Cayetano

and Jos? Joaqu?n, and they were not

the author gave

for his narrative

reader does not need

Lejeune has clearly

reader as to the level of truth thatwill be granted to the story? In terms of

into action, made