In his novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Gabriel Garcia Márquez has the impressive ability to characterize and foreshadow the character of Santiago Nasar and his final death . The murder of Santiago Nasar by Pedro and Pablo Vicario was caused by the accusation that Nasar had premarital relations with Angela Vicario. However, at that time Angela Vicario was engaged to Bayardo San Roman. When San Roman hears the new news that Angela was never a virgin before the engagement, San Roman becomes angry and decides that he no longer wants to marry her. This caused Angela Vicario's brothers, Pedro and Pablo Vicario, to plan a murder for Nasar and throughout the novel Garcia Márquez uses motifs such as birds and pigs as animal images to foreshadow and characterize Santiago Nasar's final death and character . . Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay Garcia Marquez begins the novel with the morning of Nasar's death. On the morning of the day Santiago Nasar was murdered by Pablo and Pedro Vicario, Nasar had a strange dream. His dream was about birds. That morning, Santiago Nasar “dreamed that he was walking through a grove where a light drizzle was falling, and for an instant he was happy in his dream, but when he awoke he felt completely splattered with bird droppings” (3). Since many parallels can be drawn between Nasar's dream and Nasar's life, the essence of his dream obviously resembles the story of Nasar's life. Garcia Márquez uses animal symbolism and imagery when describing the eventful dream. The lumber trees symbolized the citizens who knew of Pedro and Pablo Vicarios' plan but did nothing to prevent it, his brief happiness indicates his oblivious nature, and the bird's droppings symbolize his final death. The purpose of these techniques is to foreshadow Santiago Nasar's eventual death. The events of his dream corresponded to the events that will happen in his life, so the animal images of birds foreshadow Nasar's fate. The bird imagery continues throughout the novel, as Garcia Márquez continues to describe Nasar after talking about Angela Vicario and her accusation that she and Nasar had premarital affairs. He described Nasar as “a hawk. He went around alone, just like his father, nipping the bud of every rebellious virgin that began to appear in those woods” (90). Nasar is known to have premarital sex with virgins. Garcia Márquez uses a metaphor to compare Nasar not only to his father, but he is compared to a hawk. A hawk is a predatory bird that survives on defenseless prey. He uses this metaphor to characterize Nasar as the ideal Colombian machismo. He has the ability to do whatever he wants with women because this is one of the roles of a macho man. Like a hawk, Nasar prowls and survives on vulnerable prey. The prey is the women with whom Nasar had premarital sex. Furthermore, Garcia Márquez continues the animal imagery through another motif in the novel. Garcia Márquez used the motif of pigs when talking about the murder of Nasar by the Vicario brothers. Garcia Márquez illustrates how the Vicario brothers cruelly killed Santiago Nasar for having had premarital sex with their sister, Angela Vicario. When Nasar is stabbed over and over again, "trying to finish him off once and for all, Pedro Vicario looked for his heart, but he looked for it in his armpit, where pigs have it" (118). Pictures of animals are shown when Garcia Márquez describes that Santiago Nasar was killed in the same way the Vicario brothers would have slaughtered.