A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Magical Realism

Magical Realism Essay Magical realism has various necessary elements that contribute to separating it from other genres. Magical realism can be mistaken for the fantasy genre because it has many factors that seem unreal to the audience, though the characters act as the occurrences are completely ordinary.

Magic that occurs in a context that makes the story ordinary and clashes with logic, religion, or beliefs is a characteristic of magical realism. In the short story, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the characters represent a cultural reality where they are blinded by their rigid focus on Catholicism, and treat the supernatural ordinarily. In the middle of the story, Father Gonzaga arrived and tried to communicate with an angel who fell out of the sky, but was seen as “too human” and had “an unbearable smell” reflecting that their expectations were completely different than what was actually true (2). The characters reacted completely normal to

In Rudolfo Anaya’s novel, Bless Me Ultima, a curse was put on one of Antonio’s brothers and Ultima uses her powers against the evils of the witches. She uses three voodoo dolls, one for each Trementina sister, she has Toni’s brother breathe on the dolls and they seem to squirm in her hands. They take on a life of their own, but the characters treat as an ordinary occurrence. In the movie, Big Fish, Edward Bloom is traveling with a giant because the city was too small. They get to a circus and the giant is immediately hired by the ring leader, the characters did not respond as if the fact that he was a giant was unordinary, but instead focused on how big and entertaining he was. The reactions of the characters in response to supernatural occurrences in the story separates magical realism from other