7/29/2019 Amogh Document2

1/1

Reflective Statement on Antigone Amogh Sahu

When originally reading Chronicle of the Death Foretold, I was struck by how many different

background details were includedunderpinned the events described in the book. From the specific

South American Idea of Machismo to the honor crime, this seems very specific to the cultural

background, rather than self-contained in the novels world. I needed to understand these aspects

in greater detail to get a complete and deep understanding of the book.

Take the example of the honor crime. In Chronicle, the Honor crime is at the center of the book, as

the murder that the book is based around is considered an honor crime. Therefore, it iwas s useful

to go into discuss the ideas and implications of an honor crime. The Interactive Oral helped clear this

up for me. An honor crime is a crime committed for restore honor, and it is a matter between the

perpetrator and the victim, and as such should not be interfered with. In the case of the book, the

discussion revealed that the crime committed ended up involving the whole town, and clouding the

idea of the honor crime contract between perpetrator and victim. This revelation helped change

my conception of the motive of the crime from an inexplicable act to a cultural hallmark, putting the

crime into its appropriate cultural context.

Furthermore, the behavior of the men in the book also seemed quite significant to me originally. The

men are portrayed as more hedonistic and less perceptive than the women. The Interactive Oral

introduced to me the terms, Machismo and Marianismo, giving a name to my characterization of the

two standards of behavior. Machismo refers to the honor code for men, with the values of

perseverance, responsibility and honor taking center stage as a standard for male conduct..

Marianismo is a similar construct, referring instead to the semi-divine virginal characterization of

young girls, such as Angela Vicario, who was thrown out ofher husbands bed for not being a virgin,

implying the idealization of the virgin (marianismo) .

The cultural context, as given by the interactive oral, helped to unhaze illuminate the ideas which

originally seemed so trivial and removed from my understanding. I took these cultural aspects as

simple idiosyncrasies of the book, rather than hallmarks of the culture. Now, having gained an idea

of context, the concepts of the book help me to place it in its context and to more fully understand

where it comes from.