Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold: A Critical Reading According to Mikhail Bakhtin’s Concept of “Polyphony”

Abstract

This paper aims at reading Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold (1981) in the light of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of voice, especially the concept of “Polyphony”. The main argument is that polyphony is an important key concept to take into consideration to better comprehend the interrelationships of voices between the narrator and the other characters in this novel. In order to prove this argument, the researchers emphasize language and speech diversity in order to shed light on “Heteroglossia”, which is another related concept coined by Bakhtin. The researchers will also examine the characteristics of the double-voicedness and the manifestations of polyphony in the novel. The results show that Gabriel Garcia Márquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold can be described as a polyphonic novel because of the variety of consciousnesses and independent voices of its various characters. Eventually, the paper shows how the novel demonstrates heteroglot features because of the different characters who are coming from different social groups, which will help the reader to better realize the different layers of social voices.