A Study of a Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

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Recommended: Magic realism by marquez in one hundred years of solitude

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a master of magical realism, twist our minds eye in the story A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS. Our perspectives are disoriented as we are enchanted with beautiful prose and appaled by people’s actions.
Through the use of percpective and magical realism Marquez conveys mob mentality and people’s reactions to something unusual.
Through the use of magical realism, Marquez shows us the absurdidity of people’s actions. The large man with enormous wings converys people’s misunderstanding of the unknown. Although the large man is thought to be an angel, because of his grotesque looks and awkward nature the townspeople treat him poorly. They shame the creature in various ways. This shows people’s inability to look past something’s cover and into what it really is. Upon the entrance of the angel, the one expects some type of epiphany to occur. Early in the story, the people of town along with pilgrims from afar try to find miracles in the angel. The angels novelty soon wears off and the angel actually ends up a spectacle to the townspeople. They treat it like a circus freak throwing scraps of food to it and housing it in a chicken coup. Thoughts even cross their mind such as “clubbing him to death (Sic)”. (Marquez) Through magical realism he separates the angel from the rest of the world in a way which could not be shown without the angel being such an outlandish being. The use of the unique creature makes the absurd actions and mistreatment of the angel exaggerated.
Because of the angel’s appearance the reader is put into the same position as the characters in the story. The angel’s wings are said to be “huge buzzard wings, dirty and halfplucked…forever tangled in mud”. Marquez puts the reader into the same position as the townspeople. We, as readers, question the same things the people of the town. Once again, the absurdidity of the character presented exaggerates the situation.
A circus coming to town shows the reader the mentality of the mob. Upon hearing of a tarantula woman coming with the circus, the townspeople lose interest in the angel. The mob has gone elsewhere. The once ridiculed angel becomes nothing to them. The people acted as a whole instead of individuals when one decided to forget the angel, the whole forget the angel. They move on to the tarantula woman as the spectacle to now admire. The ...

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...btitled a Tale for Children, stands as an adult piece. The confusing nature of the story definitely does not lend itself to being read by a young audience. Marquez is telling the reader that even as adults, we sometimes act like children. We gawk at the bizarre and push it away from us. We mistreat what we do not understand. Marquez calls us all children and reminds us of the lessons we learned at a young age and how we need to remember them.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings makes the reader think about people’s reactions and natural tendencies by distorting our views through magical realism and awkward perspective. The wonder prose and outlandish characters are just a small part of the wonderful story told by the great author. Through the use of percpective and magical realism Marquez conveys mob mentality and people’s reactions to something unusual.

http://www.questia.com/popularSearches/gabriel_garcia_marquez.jsp

Anderson, Perry A Magical Realist and His reality. Natioin, 1/26/2004

Mcfarland, Ronald Community and interpretive communities in stories by Hawthorne, Kafka, And Garcia Marquez Studies in Short Fiction, Fall92, Vol. 29 Issue 4, p551

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