Conjecture on a Death Foretold
Watching Hereditary, you hope Annie successfully burns the sketchbook, you hope she doesn’t get possessed, you hope, in the most tragic scene in the film, that Peter - stuck in the attic, a young boy calling out to his mother - will somehow make it out of this mess and most ridiculously, you hope that when he climbs up to the tree house that he’ll avoid his inevitable hereditary role as Paimon’s host. Yet, if any of these things happened you’d be supremely disappointed and Hereditary would have failed as a film.
Garcia Marquez’s Chronicle of a Death Foretold is an even more egregious example of this phenomenon. Santiago Nasar’s death is not only featured in the title but described multiple times throughout the novel. Regardless, the suspense never fizzles out and you hope that, for example, someone will listen to Clotilde Armenta, or take the Vicario twins seriously and spare them of their unwanted burden, that is, protecting their family’s honour. Again however, if Garcia Marquez fulfilled these wishes, the novel wouldn't make any sense and you would probably feel cheated.
Possibly the most memorable tragedy in literary history, Romeo and Juliet lays bare the impending misfortune of the protagonists in the prologue itself. Still, as the play progresses, you can’t help but sympathise with the young lovers and yearn for a happy ending. Although irrational and far-fetched, due to Shakespeare’s virtuosity, you root for them on one level but nevertheless, on another, their demise is appropriate.
How do we make sense of this contradiction of emotion? Is it just a natural desire for a happy ending that we can’t shake off? Does it come down to catharsis and our need for a purging of ‘fear and pity’? And finally, are we being too eurocentric in our questioning and perhaps the answer lies somewhere closer to home? We haven’t figured it out yet, maybe we’ll return with an answer in the future but we hope we piqued your interest in some way.
Anyway, Fiona and Aashray are off to pet a cat, see ya ^•^