The Products Of Gender Stereotypes And Concepts Of Alpha...

The Vicario brothers are portrayed as the products of gender stereotypes and concepts of ‘alpha male’, and it is evident that they have been forced by society to kill a man, but this by itself does not represent a strong critique against machismo as the only consequences seen are a restricted individuality and freedom, and an act that was probably not seen as immoral by the readers at that time. In order to make a strong, effective critique against machismo, Garcia Marquez describes the murder as a traumatizing experience and explains its numerous negative impacts. The murder itself is described using harrowing imagery such as a ‘spurt of blood under high pressure [soaking] his shirt’ (p. 120), Santiago’s ‘intestines [exploding] out’ (p. 121) and the ‘viscera in the sunlight, clean and blue’ (p. 121). This use of disturbing images involves the readers in the grisly, traumatizing experience. The diction describing the brothers , with words such as ‘pale’ (p. 109, p. 110) ‘haggard’ (p. 109), ‘scared’ (p. 119), ‘desperate’ (p. 119) and ‘twisted with horror’ (p. 119), shows that the brothers are negatively affected by the assassination. The reader empathises with the trauma-like feelings of the brothers and pities them, and receives the message that machismo does not have benefits as everyone becomes its victim. After the assassination, the Vicario brothers display symptoms consistent with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which shows the extent to which they are negatively