A Short comentary I had to write for my highschool World Literature class:
As Guilty As The Rest of Us
“The people had stationed themselves on the square the way they did on parade days. They all saw him come out, and they all understood that now he knew they were going to kill him...”(Marquez 136). This scene is the culmination of the odd events leading up to Santiago Nasar's death being common knowledge. All the townspeople knew he was going to die, and yet for the most part they did nothing but watch it happen. Murders happening without witness intervention in large cities are often explained by anonymity, so Marquez writes instead of murder in a tight-knit small town.
It was not that they disliked him. While watching him before his death one of the villagers, trying to keep him him away from his foretold death, is said to have yelled, “Not that way, Turk; by the old dock” (136). Some people even tried to prevent the murder. “He (the mayor) promised to take care of it at once,” after he discovered the Vicario brothers had re-armed themselves, “but he went into the social club... and when he came back out again the crime had already been committed”(130). This short novel commented on human nature, and the tendency to leave difficult tasks to others, even if there aren’t any others. It shows how we are all guilty whenever we ignore responsibility, and the narrative style of the novel allows even the reader to feel guilty about Santiago’s Murder.