How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
On the upper floor, where the customs offices had been before, he built two large bedrooms and five cubbyholes for the many children he intended having, and he constructed a wooden balcony that overlooked the almond trees on the square, where Plácida Linero would sit on March afternoons to console herself for her solitude. (1.18)
From the very beginning, it is suggested that Santiago's death was destiny. This quote even makes it seem like it was predestined before he was even born, since his father built a house with a balcony for Plácida Linero to sit on while she's lonely—in other words, when neither Santiago nor his father are alive anymore.
Quote #2
Nevertheless, no sooner had she heard the news than she put on her high-heeled shoes and the church shawl she only wore for visits of condolence. My father, who had heard everything from his bed, appeared in the dining room in his pajamas and asked in alarm where she was going. "To warn my dear friend Plácida," she answered. "It isn't right that everybody should know that they're going to kill her son and she the only one who doesn't." "We've got the same ties to the Vicario's that we do with her," my father said. "You always have to take the side of the dead," she said. (1.42)
Although the narrator's mother is trying to help here, even she has given in to the idea that Santiago is done for. Wouldn't it have made more sense for her to warn Santiago, instead of his mom?
Quote #3
My mother was the only one who appreciated as an act of courage the fact that she had played out her marked cards to the final consequences. "In those days," she explained to me, "God understood such things." (2.43)
This quote is talking about what the bravery the narrator's mom sees in Angela's decision to go through with the wedding even though she wasn't a virgin. Why you think she sees it as an act of courage? What does she mean by "God understood such things?"
Quote #4
The encephalic mass weighed sixty grams more than that of a normal Englishman, and Father Amador noted in the report that Santiago Nasar had a superior intelligence and a brilliant future. (4.6)
How ironic. This quote is basically saying that Santiago had a larger than average brain, so the Father said that he had a brilliant future ahead of him. Isn't that strange thing to say about a guy who's dead?
Quote #5
Nevertheless, in the final note he pointed out a hypertrophy of the liver that he attributed to a poorly cured case of hepatitis. "That is to say," he told me, "he had only a few years of life left to him in any case." (4.6)
Even more irony. It turns out that Santiago probably would have died anyway from his bad liver. So was it really fated for him to die? Or is he just the unluckiest guy in the world?
Quote #6
They took it for granted that the other actors in the tragedy had been fulfilling with dignity, and even with a certain grandeur, their part of the destiny that life had assigned them. (4.14)
This isn't the only time that accepting one's fate is associated with dignity. Where do you think this idea comes from? Is it related to the image of a man who calmly walks out to meet a firing squad instead of crying like a baby? Or, in other words, if you're going to die you might as well be classy about it?
Quote #7
"I didn't do any of what they told me," she said, "because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was all something dirty that shouldn't be done to anybody, much less to the poor man who had the bad luck to marry me." So she let herself get undressed openly in the lighted bedroom, safe now from all the acquired fears that had ruined her life. "It was very easy," she told me, "because I'd made up my mind to die." (4.28)
It's interesting that Angela behaves as if she has no free will and can't fight against fate, when this is actually her first action that is completely independent. Do you think this sort of pitiful behavior is just a ruse or an excuse?
Quote #8
Mistress of her fate for the first time, Angela Vicario then discovered that hate and love are reciprocal passions. (4.32)
Angela and Maria are the only people in this whole novel who seem not to be completely controlled by fate. What makes them different from the other characters, if anything? How does Angela make her transformation from wimpy girl to mistress of her own fate?
Quote #9
Most of all, he never thought it legitimate that life should make use of so many coincidences forbidden literature, so that there should be the untrammeled fulfillment of a death so clearly foretold. (5.3)
We see what you did there Marquez. You went all meta on us. Clever, but it's actually a good point—the characters in this novel act just like that, characters who have no will other than that of the author.
Quote #10
He stumbled on the last step, but he got up at once. "He even took care to brush off the dirt that was stuck to his guts," my Aunt Wene told me. Then he went into his house through the back door that had been open since six and fell on his face in the kitchen. (5.78)
If nothing else, at least this novel is consistent. In the very last line we are reminded (for the millionth time) of how absolutely ridiculous it is that Santiago was actually murdered. There is no reason that he should have been, but even with the door to his house open, it seems like he couldn't escape his fate.