Family and Community, Subjection and Subjugation: A Comparative Analysis of The Colour Purple and Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Analyzing and comparing The Color Purple by Alice Walker and Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez offers a similar yet different exploration of family, community relationships, and themes of power. Generally, power is represented through the autonomy and agency of individual characters. If a character does not have such autonomy, they are to a large degree powerless. The context a character is written into dictates this. Both novels delve into how these dynamics influence individual identities and societal structures, but they do so in distinct cultural, thematic, and narrative contexts. Thus, this essay argues that The Color Purple offers a narrative of growth and redemption through family and community, while Chronicle of a Death Foretold’s  narrative exposes the unyielding grip of tradition on family and community, as well as the inevitability of fate.

Beginning with The Colour Purple, Walker portrays a fractured family that exists within a community that condones and encourages abuse and inequality in the early 20th century US and coastal Africa; her narrative focuses on how characters within these contexts can indeed heal and come back together. Themes of power, community, and family are essential to the narrative to the text, deeply influencing the characters’ lives and development. 

Celie’s experiences within her family highlight the destructive effects of patriarchal oppression. She is sexually assaulted repeatedly by her father - later revealed to be stepfather - and married off to Mr. ___ in a similarly abusive relationship. Both men view her as property; that Celie ‘can work like a man’ determines much of her worth. She is objectified through the power held by men because of gender norms and thus, a familial structure rooted in control and subjugation is propagated. The novel critiques the inherited cycle of abuse in families, as Celie first accepts her pain as inevitable because of the norms she has internalized. 

Sisterhood, on the other hand, is an aspect of family that Walker uses to redeem the narrative. Celie’s bond with her sister, Nettie, serves as her emotional backbone. The letters - intially addressed to God and later as ‘Dear Nettie’ - become an important source of hope and connection. The letters serve as Walker’s symbols for the enduring power of familial love despite physical separation. The relationship contrasts sharply with the oppressive familial ties Celie endures, thus showing that family can also be a path to strength and moving on. 

As the narrative progresses, the characters Celie and the reader are introduced to redefine what a family can be. Celie creates a chosen family that subverts traditional notions of kinship. Characters like Shug Avery, Sofia, and Mary Agnes form a supportive community that aid Celie’s growth. For example, Shug - at first seen as an outsider due to her unconventional lifestyle - catalyzes Celie’s disovery of her sexuality and spirituality; Walker characterizes her as a medium for Celie to reclaim her autonomy. Power dynamics are flipped when Celie takes control of her own narrative, family, and community.

Walker’s female characters redefine the reader’s understanding of community as well. For example, Sofia’s boldness and refusal to yield to the patriarchy inspires other women. Shug Avery is able to navigate societal judgement whilst remaining independent challenges community norms and motivates Celie. Mr. ___’s sisters, Kate and Carrie, are Celie’s first few friends and buy Celie clothes as she has never been able to buy clothes herself. Celie tries to tell ‘Kate what it mean[s]’ but she ‘git[s] hot in the face and stutter[s].’ Walker’s characters allow Celie to find her own community and autonomy. 

The broader community in The Colour Purple reflects both the draconian societal norms and the potential for change. Here, men dominate women, and African-Americans are faced with institutionalized oppression and economic exploitation. Sofia’s imprisonment following her defiance of the mayor’s wife represents the community’s enforcement of racial and gender hegemonies. Her resistance and severe punishment of twelve years in jail emphasises the plight of African-American women at the time.

Moving on to Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Marquez uses a pseudo-journalistic style to recount the murder of the protagonist Santiago Nasar twenty-eight years later. The story is set in a conservative and Catholic Colombian town in the 1950s where there are institutionalised biases based on ethnicity and gender. Power, once again, lies in tradition. The ideals of machismo and marianismo dictate the expectations people are born into and meant to fulfil. 

While Nasar isn’t born into some predefined mould (though he still does take over his father’s job as expected), he still has has sexual freedom; he can do as he pleases because that is the standard. An inherited cycle of unfair standards is portrayed in Nasar’s family and household. Nasar’s father mistreated and seduced Victoria Gúzman, turning her into the household maid. Later, Divina Flor is terrified of Nasar when he tries to do the same to her. Victoria Gúzman thus has a grudge against the family and is one of the reasons she never tells Nasar about the Vicario Twins’ plan to kill him. Marquez may be alluding to there being some sort of karmic repercussion for machismo.

In Chapter 2, the scene where Angela Vicario is violently confronted by her family about not being a virgin is particularly important and microcosmic of the wider themes of power and family. Bayardo San Roman returning Angela is a huge disgrace to the Vicarios and Angela’s mother beats her for it. Angela is powerless in the face of tradition with no agency of her own. The safety of her own family is violated by the precedence tradition has over everything. She lives in a community where her virginity determines her worth.

Despite being bruised and beaten, Angela also holds power. The text suggests that she randomly picks a name from the shadows to tell the twins, so she has the power the determine somebody’s fate through a simple choice. An interpretation of the text is that Angela losing her virginity before marriage is symbolic of a female rebellion against the patriarchy of the community and its societal expectations; she subverts the norms of conservative Columbian society. While the men were able to casually engage in premarital sex, the women had to follow strict rules. Such are the expectations of the world they are born into. Angela Vicario losing her virginity can be seen as a protest to unfair norms between the genders, suggesting that women should also be allowed sexual freedom.

Still, this protest leads to a man’s death - whose guilt is never truly confirmed - showing that this tradition is ruthless and deeply ingrained. Marquez uses circumlocutory language in the extract to emphasise the ambiguity of Nasar’s death. Phrases and diction such as ‘she went to her grave with her secret’, ‘stealth’, and ‘she looked for it in the shadows’ add to the equivocations and mystery of the text. It is the power of tradition that binds all of this together; it controls the family. Marquez shows how community norms are sacrosanct and unyielding, even if the accused may not be guilty. 

If one were to take a sympathetic reading of the text, the Vicario Twins are powerless to their duty in carrying out the ‘honour killing’; they are victims of the tradition their family and community follow. The village would agree with this, considering how easily they move on from the crime. The robotic way they ask Angela for the name of the perpetrator, makes it seem like the execution was an act of duty rather than their choice; Nasar was their childhood friend after all. Thus, both men and women are arguably bound in their community because of how little agency they truly have, yet gender norms and expectations maintain patriarchal oppression. 

In the rest of the text, the power of tradition continues to inform the community. It is a christian, patriarchal, conservative tradition enforcing machismo and marianismo. This tradition shapes the community of the Colombian village which leads to some people not informing Santiago of the planned murder or not trying harder to stop the murder. Nobody speaks about the murder; Marquez personifies the town as sharing a sense of guilt over their inaction.

It is worth nothing that Nasar’s father came from the Middle East: Nasar was ethnically mixed. In a town that values the ‘purity’ of their blood more, such that Nasar was instinctively considered inferior to the locals of the village despite his wealth, the light brushing over his death may not be that surprising. The power of tradition on a community’s beliefs and actions is evident. The power of tradition is so strong that punishment for going against it is manifested into fate. Leitmotifs of fate and chance relate to the mystery of the text and are signatures of Marquez’s magical realism. Examples include Nasar’s mother’s misinterpretation of his dream and her locking the front door, Victoria ‘disembowling the rabbits’ foreshadowing Nasar’s grisly death, and the Bishop never stepping foot on the village therefore leaving it somewhat tarnished. These are coincidences yet their consequences are grave as Santiago Nasar somehow never runs into one of the few that wanted to help him. This highlights Marquez’s theme of absurdity, the absurdity of random events in life and how fortune randomly causes them. 

Finally, The Colour Purple and Chronicle of a Death Foretold have similarities and differences over their delineations of family, community, and power. Both novels portray families that are shaped by patriarchal norms, reinforcing male dominance. Walker portrays a family dynamic rooted in male authority through the stepfather and Mr. ___’s abuse towards Celie. On the other hand, the Vicario family is Marquez’s vessel, conveying the community’s expectations of female chastity and obsequiousness which ultimately lead to Santiago Nasar’s execution. 

Family loyalty - another expectation of their tradition and community - is also a similarity. It acts as a driving force behind character actions. For example, the Vicario brothers feel compelled to murder Santiago in order to restore their family honour whilst Celie’s early years are marked by her self-sacrificing efforts to protect her sister, Nettie, and others from harm. While the familial intention to protect is common, the subsequent actions and their connotations are quite different. 

Furthermore, community as an enforcer of societal norms and expectations is shared as a theme. While the cultural contexts of the texts could be considered a difference, they are more of a similarity. Thematically, both settings share harsh societal structures. The community Celie is born into enforces misogyny and racism; it perpetuates Celie’s suffering, such being the expectation of women at the time. Santiago Nasar’s death is effectively enabled by the town who fail to intervene, reflecting their complicity in enforcing honour culture.

The differences between the texts lie in how Walker and Marquez respectively use their shared themes to shape distinct narratives. In The Colour Purple, familial relationships transform from being sources of pain to ways of healing. Celie’s bond with Nettie and her reconciliation with Mr. ___ show the potential for change. In Chronicle of a Death Foretold, however, family dynamics remain rigid, infrangible, and unforgiving. Angela’s parents forcing her into a marriage and the Vicario brothers carrying out a severe act of violence for the sake of honour exemplify this. Moreover, Walker’s female characters redefine what a family can be and signify Celie’s personal growth as she finds her own community. In contrast, the actions of Marquez’s characters, even the women, largely conform to societal and familial roles in the community (except for Angela, given the interpretation that her actions were symbolic of protest). The Color Purple ultimately offers a hopeful narrative of how family and community can start as source of pain and change into path to self-discovery; Chronicle of a Death Foretold reveals the unforgiving power of tradition and fate. In Marquez’s world, the status quo is maintained, while in Walker’s, it is not. 

To conclude, The Color Purple and Chronicle of a Death Foretold examine the interplay of family, community, and power in shaping individual lives. While both critique patriarchal structures and societal complicity, they differ in their portrayal of resistance and redemption. The Color Purple offers a narrative of transformation and empowerment, while Chronicle of a Death Foretold presents a static and tragic depiction of lives constrained by honor and tradition. Together, these works underscore the complex intersections of personal and collective forces in defining human experiences.