Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez of Colombia is another Latin American author who used magical realism in his writing. Unlike Cortazar, his use of bending reality was more subtle. When I was reading his literature, I was expecting a similar experience when I read Cortazar. In his story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", Marquez slowly works the reader into a state of frustration. The story starts out with crabs that have, for lack of a better word, infested a city. Then, a man with wings is found and he's placed in a chicken coop. The man is sick but a baby who was sick prior to his arrival heals. The man with wings is said to be angel and people pay money to see him. Eventually, he gets better and flies away. "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" was a very tough story to grasp. However, it has come to my attention that this story is a meant to speak about the Catholic Church. A priest in the story judges the angel as unfit to be holy because he doesn't fit into his criteria for holy and mythical Our ideas of human faith blinds us. When people think of angels, they expect mystical, beautiful beings. This angel was old and ugly. If one were to look at this being with no assumptions of how angels are supposed to look like, they might find such a being to be beautiful and mythical. People limit themselves when they put God in a box. 

The other Marquez story I read was "The Handsomest Drowned Man". This story involved a drowned man who was taller, stronger, and more beautiful than any other person the people of the island had ever seen. He came to them by the current and was dressed by the women in fine clothing and was essentially worshiped for a time. The women were in awe of him and eventually started calling him Esteban. In addition, the men of the island fell into infatuation when they saw his face as well. He was given a raft so that he could be buried in the ocean but the people put a sail on his raft, in case he ever wanted to come back. Also, their houses were adjusted so that everything was bigger and preserved in the man's honor so that future generations could learn about Esteban. I interpreted this story as rising above contentment. The people seemed to be satisfied with where they were and when that happens, life can become stagnant. They realized that beauty could inspire and will people to want to make more of themselves. This is similar to the movie Garden State where the main character was trying to fight the same thing.