The Scapegoat: Empathy and Moral Deliberation in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

Abstract: In literature, scapegoats function as a standard device for structuring conflict, eliciting readers’ empathy or blame, and inducing moral deliberation. novella by the Colombian novelist Gabriel García Márquez, serves as a case study of the reader’s process of moral deliberation induced by the presence of a scapegoat figure within a narrative. García Márquez created an ethical conundrum at the heart of his novella, an extended meditation on the phenomena of blaming, taking sides, and scapegoating that provokes readers’ reflections on narrative empathy itself, its functions, and its potential for manipulation.