donrogeliodelaflor


 * **Character Name** || Don Rogelio de la Flor ||
 * **Role in Plot** || Don Rogelio de la Flor, eighty-six-years-old, is Clotilde Armenta's husband. He is the first person Clotilde tells of the Vicario brothers' plan to kill Santiago Nasar. However, he doesn't believe his wife and dismisses her consternation, telling her not to "be silly" (55). To him, it seems impossible that the twins' disposition would allow them to "kill anybody, much less someone rich" (55). When he finally witnesses the truth -- Santiago's corpse "hewn [...] to bits against the locked door of his own house" -- he dies of shock (99) despite having been hitherto a "marvel of vitality" (98). ||
 * **Significance of Name in Work** || "Don" is a Spanish and Italian honorific. It was a title originally reserved for royalty, select nobles, and for use within the church hierarchy, but in contemporary usage it represents a mark of esteem for a person of social or official distinction and is used as a more formal version of the term "Senor". It is used in conjunction with the person's name. In English, similar honorifics include "Sir" and Dame" (used when referring/speaking to a person who has been knighted). "Rogelio" is the Spanish derivation of the Latin word //rogatus//, meaning '"request." "De la flor" presumably means "of the flower", since //flor// is derived from the Latin word for "flower," //floris//.

In //Chronicles,// although Rogelio is given the honorific of "Don," the narrator does not elucidate the reason for this; the reader must trust the narrator and content him or herself with knowing that, as the narrator claims, Don Rogelio is a "good husband" (98) and presumably someone of considerable distinction within the town, someone whose opinions and decisions carry some weight and are likely to have been respected by the townspeople. His reaction, when he learns of the twins' plan, is one of insouciance that stems from disbelief; similar reactions are reiterated in most of the other townspeople when they, too, receive the news. His first name is an ironic reminder of the role that he does not play in the novel. The Vicario brothers repeatedly proclaim their plans to the townspeople and perhaps a request made by Don Rogelio to spare Santiago Nasar, if such a request had been made, would have been effective in stopping them. In another ironic twist, the product of Don Rogelio's inaction (Santiago's horrifying death) becomes the cause of his own death at the age of eighty six, despite the fact that he had been a 'marvel of vitality" (98). ||
 * **Student's Name** || Corrie Gao ||