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Flowers
Like flowers, birds and references to birds appear throughout the text, often to a somewhat ambiguous effect. Santiago Nasar dreams of birds the night before his murder, and Plácida Linero fails to recognize this as a bad omen. The connection between birds and omens situates the novel within the tradition of Greek tragedy, in which augurs, or prophets, read the future by watching birds move across the sky. Notably, Santiago also raises falcons. The epigraph of the novel, a quote from Portuguese playwright Gil Vicente, tells the reader that “the pursuit of love is like falconry.” It might be said that the figure of birds, like the figure of flowers, is meant to both emphasize and bridge the disparate—but perhaps not so disparate—realms of love and violence.
Birds Quotes in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The Chronicle of a Death Foretold quotes below all refer to the symbol of Birds. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 1
Quotes
What happened, according to her, was that the boat whistle let off a shower of compressed steam as it passed by the docks, and it soaked those who were closest to the edge. It was a fleeting illusion: the bishop began to make the sign of the cross in the air opposite the crowd on the pier, and he kept on doing it mechanically afterwards, without malice or inspiration, until the boat was lost from view and all that remained was the uproar of the roosters.
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Birds Symbol Timeline in Chronicle of a Death Foretold
The timeline below shows where the symbol Birds appears in Chronicle of a Death Foretold. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 1
...dream about walking through a grove of trees, but upon waking he feels “spattered with bird shit.” His mother, Plácida Linero, a skilled interpreter of dreams, later recalls to the Narrator...
(full context)
...the process. He tells her about his dream, and she informs him that anything involving birds is a good omen. He waves goodbye to her casually and heads to the kitchen....
(full context)
The docks are crowded with people waiting for the Bishop. Many have brought gifts: roosters, because the Bishop loves cockscomb soup, and loads of wood. Despite the excitement, the Bishop...
(full context)
Chapter 5
...forgive herself for mixing up the good omen of trees with the bad omen of birds in Santiago’s dream.
(full context)
