Mama Day - George

"Until you walked into my office that afternoon, I would have never called myself a superstitious man. Far from it. To believe in fate or predestination means you have to believe there's a future, and I grew up without one" (22).

 

Unpack these lines. What does George mean by "growing up without a future"? How does this compare to Cocoa's upbringing? How did she grow up? How might the differences explain the way they act?

Mama Day - Prologue

“The wild card is all this is the thousand days, and we guess if we put our heads together we'd come up with something - which ain't possible since Sapphira Wade don't live in the part of our memory we can use to form words" (4).

Naylor splits Mama Day into three distinct narrative voices. George, Cocoa, and "the collective island voice" each narrate specific sections of the book.

What does this passage say of memory? What does this say about the narrative voice? Answer these questions if you wish, or say a few lines about what you think is going on in the prologue overall. How does the island voice know a name it is impossible to know? If you've read further than the prologue at this point, say a little about this collective island voice.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Premonition

“There had never been a death more foretold” (50). 

Where else in literature are there “deaths foretold”? New Testament. Romeo and Juliet. Macbeth. How does the sense of premonition or fate pervade the book? What does it do to your reading of Santiago Nasar’s movements in the book?

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Best Sentence(s)

“She only took the time necessary to say the name. She looked for it in the shadows, she found it at first sight among the many, many easily confused names from this world and the other, and she nailed it to the wall with her well-aimed dart, like a butterfly with no will whose sentence has always been written” (47).

I think this is one of the best passages in the book. What is your favorite sentence so far? What do you like about it? What makes it great?

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Reunion

Caution: Spoilers - though not earth-shattering, in my opinion, so read on if you wish...

“He was carrying a suitcase with clothing in order to stay and another just like it with almost two thousand letters she had written him. They were arranged by date in bundles tied with colored ribbons, and they were all unopened” (95).

Why do you think Bayardo San Roman and Angela Vicario get back together after so many years? What effect does their reunion have on the story? Do we forget that this is Bayardo’s story as much as it is Santiago’s?

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Memory

“I had a very confused memory of the festival before I decided to rescue it piece by piece from the memory of others” (43). 

We will pay a lot of attention to the reliability of narrators in all the books we read. Discuss what you think are the biggest problems with the narrator’s reliability, and how an understanding of these problem can lead to a greater understanding of the novel’s themes.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Weather

“Furthermore: all the many people he ran into after leaving his house at five minutes past six and until he was carved up like a pig an hour later remembered him as being a little sleepy but in a good mood, and he remarked to all of them in a casual way that it was a very beautiful day. No one was certain if he was referring to the state of the weather” (4).

Is this an example of naturalism? How do you think the attention paid to the weather in the first chapter relates to the narrative problem of the novel?