Chronicle of a Death Foretold Drawing

When I read the first paragraph of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ description of Santiago Nasar’s dream caught my attention. I became interested in deciphering the meanings of Santiago’s dreams of walking through timber trees and flying through almond trees. Since I am a psychology major, I found it fascinating to research the meanings of the dreams. To help explain my ideas of the meanings of the trees, I decided to make the trees the main focal point of the drawing and have Santiago overlapping the two trees. The tree on the left (green tree) is the timber tree and the one on the right (pink tree) is the almond tree. To describe the meanings of each tree, I wrote what each tree means in the corresponding tree. To tie the dreams into the novella reality, I drew main scenes from the novella on the outside of the tree that the scenes related to.
I ended up researching the meanings of trees in dreams through the website www.dreamforth.com. I found that an almond tree symbolizes experiencing great pleasure and joy in life and that it is a sign of upcoming marriages. In the almond tree dream, Santiago dreamt that he was “in a tinfoil airplane and flying through the almond trees without bumping into anything” (pg. 1). I found that flying without trouble in a dream implies dealing with circumstances well elevated above some situation with a different point of view on things. Dreamforth said that timber trees symbolize good fortune and peace. Santiago’s timber trees were lush, which signifies new beginnings, development, and desires indicative of uniqueness and maturity.
After researching what the trees mean, I went back through the novella to see how the trees relate to reality. I found that the trees represented positive outcomes for the dreamer; however, during the novella, there were no positive outcomes for Santiago. As a result, I decided that Santiago’s dreams were what he wanted his reality to be like. Since I felt that way, I picked out important scenes and drew them outside the tree that they went against. With the almond tree representing marriage, I placed a broken up marriage symbol on the outside because the marriage between Angela Vicario and Bayardo San Román didn’t last. Also, Santiago’s engagement to Flora Miguel fell apart once she found out what Angela accused Santiago of. I drew the tombstone to symbolize how Santiago had no life on the day of his death and how “he already looked like a ghost” (pg. 194).
Since flying without trouble symbolizes a different point of view on situations, I drew the eyes of Hortensia Baute, who was the woman that thought she saw blood on the knives, with the reflection of the knives, to show her point of view of the events leading up to the killing. Since lush timber trees represent new beginnings, I placed the door from Santiago’s house with a blood pile below it because Santiago did not have a new beginning, but instead had an ending with death. I illustrated another broken marriage on the timber tree side because that demonstrates how new beginnings that should have happened were destroyed. Santiago dreamt about peace, but in reality, there was no peace between him and the Vicario brothers, which is why I drew the knife. Because Santiago Nasar’s dreams about trees demonstrate what he wants his reality to be like, I colored blue around the trees. The blue shows his happiness that he has when he is in his “make-believe” reality. I colored the rest of the poster board black to represent Santiago’s twisted reality. Santiago didn’t have the joy he wanted in his life, but unfortunately had depression and horror.
After viewing my drawing of Chronicle of a Death Foretold, I hope that the audience will understand why I felt the way I did about Santiago Nasar’s dreams. I want the audience to develop a new way to read into the novella and develop a better understanding of why Gabriel Garcia Marquez started his novella off with Santiago’s dreams.