Animal Imagery In Santiago's Death

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Santiago’s unavoidable death is also seen through use of subtle animal imagery. One of Santiago states that if she had known he was to die she would have “hog tied him” (20) so that he could not leave and face death. Santiago is being referred to as a hog. This alludes to the idea that he was to be killed just like a hog; gruesomely and publicly. Later, Marquez employs buzzards in order to foreshadow the location of the murder. It is said that “The buzzards kept watch over the garbage on the docks” (10). Buzzards are scavenger birds and can be easily associated to death. The towns people sacrificed “eleven hogs” and were set up to “be roasted for the people on the public square” (10). In the novel Santiago was referred to as a hog. Many…show more content…
Although his murder did not occur in the public square, everyone in town knew he was going to be killed and disemboweled just like an animal. The day of Santiago murder “Cocks could be heard, my mother is accustomed to saying, remembering that day. She never associated the distant uproar with the arrival of the bishop, but with the last leftovers from the wedding” (21). That day the cocks were rowdy because they too knew death was coming. When referring to the “left overs” of the wedding , one could interpret such words to mean the unresolved business and the omission of the truth of Angela’s virtue. One could also connect it to the fact that after Angela and Beyardo’s fight the Vicario brothers had to renew Angela’s honor by killing the man that took her virginity. The murder was the weddings “leftovers”. When Angela was asked who robbed her of her virtue she looked for a name in” the shadows, she found it at first sight among the many… and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has been written (47). She looked “from this world and the other”(47) because Santiago was a dead man from the start and thus, his name could only be found in the “other world.” The reader knows immediately that Angela is referring to Santiago because just like the butterfly was nailed to the wall Santiago was to be nailed with knives against a
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