The Significance of dreams as a symbol in Chronicle of a death foretold written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
In the novel, Chronicle of a death foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores the theme of how apathy invariably results in tragedy. The apathy shown by the characters before and even after the murder incident results in the mysterious death of the young protagonist, Santiago Nasar. Marquez employs the important symbol of dreams in the novel to develop the thematic issue of apathy. Marquez describes the dream of Santiago Nasar as a foreshadowing of his death, filling up the missing parts in the books as if everything that happens in the town was in the dream.
Tree symbol within dreams Zola deliberately employs the recurring symbol of…show more content… His death was able to be foreboded by people, however people’s apathy has made them miss out the warnings. The power of forecasting the future is extremely important however Santiago’s mother can only forecast “other people’s dream” which can also mean that because it was forecasting other people’s future, the mother was ignorant toward the message from the dream. She did not “pay any great attention to the trees” showing how the apathy of dream linked to the apathy of her son’s future. The death of Santiago Nasar had already been decided from the prophetic dream; Dream foreshadows the story of Santiago Nasar’s death. The two dreams that Santiago Nasar described were going through trees. The first dream Santiago Nasar dreamed was, “he was alone in a tinfoil airplane and flying through the almond trees without bumping into anything”. Tinfoil airplane symbolizes the Vicario twins, the murderer of Santiago Nasar. Vicario twins announced to the people that they were going to kill Santiago Nasar however they were not confident about the murder. Marquez used metaphor of tinfoil airplane because to show how airplane made sound to the trees representing the people in the book and Marqueze used tinfoil airplane to indicate how Vicario twin was able to be stopped from murdering easily. However the people did not stop the Vicario twin from murdering which is shown in the imagery of airplane bumping into the trees. This means because of apathy of the people lead Vicario twin to think that murdering Santiago Nasar was acceptable. Also in the second dream, Santiago describes that “he was going through a grove of timber trees where gentle drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely spattered with bird shit” showing how he was also walking through the tree. This time the person who is walking is himself and he is walking through timber trees