The twins stayed out of it. “It looked to us like woman problems,” Pablo Vicario told me.

When the Vicario brothers see Angela arguing with her parents over whether she wants to marry Bayardo San Roman, they do not get involved, as they think the situation simply concerns “woman problems.” However, both seem more than eager to get involved if a problem brings shame upon their family. Pablo, like his brother, sees certain subjects as only pertaining to women and yet knows his role as a man.

“Before God and before men,” Pablo Vicario said. “It was a matter of honor.”

As Pablo and Pedro confess that they killed Santiago Nasar at their trial, Pablo calls the murder “a matter of honor.” To Pablo, the only way to restore their sister’s honor was to kill the man who supposedly took her virginity before she was married. Clearly, their sense of honor, an abstract and inconsistent ideal, seems more important to the Vicario family than the life of a man.

Pablo Vicario was six minutes older than his brother, and he was the more imaginative and resolute until adolescence.

The narrator explains that even though the twins are similar in many ways, they show their differences in urgent situations. Pablo, as the older twin, originally seemed more decisive and in charge, but somehow Pedro became the more authoritarian one after adolescence. Such a reversal shows that they might have shaped their personalities in response to each other as they matured.

Pablo Vicario confirmed several times to me that it hadn’t been easy for him to convince his brother of their final resolve.

Although Pedro decided that they must kill Santiago Nasar, Pablo told the narrator that Pedro tried to back out of the murder several times, and Pablo had to convince Pedro to go through with the killing. While Pablo appears to be more of a follower, once a job is assigned to him he must and will follow through with the task.

“I felt the way you do when you’re galloping on horseback,” Pablo Vicario declared.

As Pablo tells the narrator how they killed Santiago, he compares the feeling to galloping on a horse. Pablo did not come up with the idea to kill Santiago, but once he and Pedro go through with the killing, he feels powerful. Even though Pedro seemed to be the more ruthless brother in the beginning, Pablo clearly derives more pleasure from violence in the end.

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