Gabriel Garcia Marquez satirizes the incompetence of public officials in the story by creating a situation where murder is justifiable if it is done in defense of honor. Even in the court, the defense lawyer makes a point that the murder was “…in legitimate defense of honor, which was upheld by the court in good faith…” (48). The author chose faith in the context to emphasize that the court believed that the murder was indeed committed for a legitimate reason, which also juxtaposes the ideal court which should be unbiased and unprejudiced. Furthermore, by making the honor killing by the Vicario twins to be widely ‘accepted’ by officials, the author satirizes the incompetence of public officials by making fools of them to the point that they should not have their jobs as cops or mayor. This is shown by the police officer who does not attempt to resolve the murder scheme but rather informs the Colonel Lazaro Aponte, mayor of the town, and forgets the murder plan. The Colonel realizes the connection between murder scheme and Angela Vicario’s return during the wedding night and finds the twins; he just “…took away the knives and sent them off to sleep” (56). Right after that, his wife makes a fine point that he should have detained the twins, but he casually ignores her and stupidly points out that “Now they haven’t got anything to kill anybody with,” (56) which IS just rather crude humor of how shortsighted public officials are because the mayor certainly knew that Vicario twins were butchers and they have more than two knives.
The characters in the story are heavily influenced by honor. Angela Vicario is returned to her parents the day she was married, which means that her husband disowned her. The fact that the Vicario twins kill Santiago in order to restore the honor of their family shows that honor is most vital to the people in the town, especially those who are poor. The fact that murder was considered a reasonable retribution for the crime of taking a girl's virginity indicates how awful it is for women to sleep with a man while not married. Additionally, Gabriel Marquez shows how important honor is to family by describing the scene of Angela beaten nearly to death by her mother. This scene shows the severity of the blow to the Vicario family’s honor by Angela, implying that the family would rather kill the family member than have damage to their honor. It relates to the severity of the crime the Vicario twins commit, which demonstrates the limitation imposed on the women because in the story, a man is encouraged lose his virginity before his marriage but a woman can not lose her virginity to show the sign of purity. By giving up her virginity before the marriage, Angela ruined her chances of marrying well, and marriage was a woman's one way to advance in the world, which shows the difference in how man advances in the world. Also, men are rather encouraged to experience the sexual activity before marriage in whorehouse in town; even the narrator visited the whore house to meet Maria Alejandra Cervantes, who “… did away with my (his) generation’s virginity” (65), which is ironic that Angela’s marriage is decided by”… parents and her older sisters with their husbands, gathered together in the parlor, imposed on her the obligation to marry a man whom she had barely seen…” (34). The family expects Angela to be a virgin and does not consider her opinion. It is humorous how whores have more “freedom” and respect from men than well raised women in a family.
In the story, the town's unspoken system of honor and gender-biased standards within their society condones the murder of Santiago Nasar as result. Gabriel Garcia Marquez raises concerns of misusage of the honor that is used to justify injustice and double standards between men and women.
