How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
When they heard her, the Vicario twins reflected, and the one who had stood up sat down again. Both followed Santiago Nasar with their eyes as he began to cross the square. "They looked at him more with pity," Clotilde Armenta said. (1.26)
Pity is not normally the emotion that murderers have for their victims. Maybe hatred or anger, but not pity. Why do you think the Vicario brothers felt this way about Santiago?
Quote #2
Don Lázaro Aponte, a colonel from the academy making use of his good retirement, and town mayor for eleven years, waved to him with his fingers. "I had my own very real reasons for believing he wasn't in any danger anymore," he told me. Father Carmen Amador wasn't worried either. "When I saw him safe and sound I thought it had all been a fib," he told me. (1.36)
These guys are the pillars of their community. Don Lázaro Aponte is the legal pillar, and Father Carmen Amador is the religious pillar. So if they acted this way and failed to prevent the murder, how can we expect the rest of the community to behave differently?
Quote #3
Furthermore, with the reconstruction of the facts, they had feigned a much more unforgiving bloodthirstiness than really was true, to such an extreme that it was necessary to use public funds to repair the main door of Placida Linero's house, which was all chipped with knife thrusts. (3.5)
Sentences like these make us feel like we're in bizarro world. Just how does it make sense that the Vicario brothers have to pretend they are more bloodthirsty than they really are in order to be absolved of guilt? What is it about the culture of the town that mandates the death of Santiago? Are the brothers really guilty?