Magical and Realistic Elements in The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship

1105 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: A short history of Latin American literature

Magical and Realistic Elements in The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship

Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born in a small Colombian town in 1928 and has written many short stories and novels over the years. One of his short stories, "The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship", published in 1972, is in a book called A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes that was published in 1991. This was an interesting story and had many magical and realistic elements.

The main magical element in this story would be the ghost ship, but many others exist, too. The things that the ship did were magical. Every March on one certain day, the ship would come, and it never made a sound, not even when it crashed. It always came at night and would disappear when the beam of the rotating light from the colonial city hit it. It followed a red lantern and turned into a real ship once it was away from the shoals where it crashed. The ship looked magical being described as "the largest ocean liner in this world...whiter that anything, twenty times taller than the steeple and some ninety-seven times longer than the village" (379). Another magical element was a chair that the main character's mom had, called "the murderous chair", "evil" or "the throne of misfortune" (376-377). It was called these names because, the main character's mom and four other women after her died in the chair the same way. When found, they were "still warm, but half rotted away as after a snake bite" (376).

The realistic elements were the small village where the main character lived and the people there. The larger colonial city on the other side of the bay and its "old slave port and rotating light" make the picture clearer so it seems more realistic (375). The bay, buoys, and harbo...

... middle of paper ...

...lieve that strange things do happen, but they are a little more realistic than these.

The many magical elements invade the realistic elements in this story. These elements make the story more interesting and make it challenging for the main character. He is misunderstood because no one will believe him about the ghost ship. The author seems to side with the main character and believes the ghost ship is real. The magical elements create many questions, and these cause me to believe that this story could never be real, even though I do believe that there could be ghosts. If a person will keep an open mind, he or she may find all kinds of things that will amaze himself or herself.

Work Cited

Marquez, Gabiel Garcia. "The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship." A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. Ed. Thomas Colchie. N. Y.: Plume Printing, 1991: 373-379.

Show More
Related

  • Summary Of In The Realm Of Hungry Ghost

    1473 Words  | 3 Pages

    The book “In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction” was published in the year 2008 on the 12th of February by Knopf Canada. The author of this book is Dr. Gabor Mate who has worked for twelve years in the eastside Vancouver with patients suffering from addiction, mental illness and HIV. He is also a renowned speaker and a bestselling author. He also received the Hubert Evans Prize for Literary Non-Fiction and the 2012 Martin Luther King Humanitarian Award for his work. (….)

    Read More

  • King Leopold's Ghost: A Story Of Greed, Terror, And Heroism

    1410 Words  | 3 Pages

    Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold 's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.

    Read More

  • Identifying The Day We Were Dogs

    1006 Words  | 3 Pages

    In magical realism, "the text contains something we cannot explain according to the laws of the universe as we know them" (Faris 167) and the "descriptions detail a stong presence of the phenomenal world" (Faris 169). These quotes explain why one might think that this story is magical realism due to the two different worlds that are going on at the same time. Also, one "experience[s] the closeness or near-merging of two realms, two worlds" (Fari...

    Read More

  • Julio Cortazar's Axolotl Misidentified as Magical Realism

    968 Words  | 2 Pages

    Cortazar, Julio. "Axolotl". A Hammock Beneath the Mangoes. Ed. Thomas Colchie, N.Y.: Plume Printing, 1991. 11-15.

    Read More

  • The Wars by Timothy Findley

    726 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many times throughout Robert’s life, all those whom he thought were close to him, while he tried stick to his ideals, had betrayed him. When Robert lost Rowena, he felt that he had failed at his duty and he feels he must make up for it by joining the army. Expecting love and support from his parents, his mother verbally slaps him in the face. “I know what you want to do. I know you want to go away and be a soldier. Well you can go to hell. I’m just another stranger (p28).” Captain Taffler also betrayed Robert, even though he didn’t realize it. Robert set him up as a role model to emulate during the war, but once he found out that he was a homosexual, Robert’s ideals of people he looks up to in war were crushed. “He picked up a boot and held it in his hand. Its weight alarmed him and the texture of its leather skin appalled him with its human feel. He through the boot across the room and shattered the mirror (p45).” Finally, Robert was betrayed by his own love for others. By keeping faith with his...

    Read More

  • Medicare Part D

    1800 Words  | 4 Pages

    The United States of America accounts for only 5% of the world’s population, yet as a nation, we devour over 50% of the world’s pharmaceutical medication and around 80% of the world’s prescription narcotics (American Addict). The increasing demand for prescription medication in America has evoked a national health crisis in which the government and big business benefit at the expense of the American public.

    Read More

  • Underage Drinking: Enforcing The Drinking Age

    1155 Words  | 3 Pages

    For decades, certain people have been contemplating on how to go about the issue of underage drinking; people of the government, parents, and other individuals concerned in global affairs. The problem is, the issue of underage drinking and the nationwide ineffectiveness of the drinking age law of twenty-one isn't debated and discussed as much and as aggressively as it should be. And the main components of discussion ought to be the matter of binge drinking among teenagers and college students, drinking issues and statistics in foreign countries, and finally, possible solutions for this problem. The main point is that the states of our country can only attempt to enforce the law rather than try approaching the problem in any other way. So for that reason, states should be allowed to figure out and experiment on possible ways to solve this matter on their own without government interference.

    Read More

  • The Morality Of Old Tradition In Shirley Jackson's The Lottery

    829 Words  | 2 Pages

    The narratives that we find in this story are always set in the most everyday reality, in a daily routine that apparently has nothing special. Until everything changes. Although we do not find in these stories supernatural elements or the characteristics of horror stories. Perhaps because it is responsible for teaching us the terrible

    Read More

  • Progress and Innocence in One Hundred Year of Solitude

    2165 Words  | 5 Pages

    McGuirk, Bernard and Richard Cardwell, edd. Gabriel Garcia Marquez: New Readings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

    Read More

  • A Very Old Man With Wings, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    876 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the story “A Very Old Man With Wings”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the

    Read More

  • The Rise in the Price of Prescription Drugs

    1345 Words  | 3 Pages

    Why are the prices so high? Some critics of the drug companies argue that the larger firms are ripping off the American public, are dishonest and, in some cases, unsafe. On the other hand, there are health care workers such as doctors and their supporters who claim that research and testing for drugs costs money. This supposedly justifies their prices for their products. Also, as an argument to their side, they say that their practice is a benefit to the improvement to mankind. It is a life saving business, but are these prices justified? As one can see, this is a very important issue in medicine today. It affects everyone involved with medicine, which is much of the American public. It also affects the physicians and drug makers.

    Read More

  • The Imaginary Comparison of A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings and The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World

    1036 Words  | 3 Pages

    Marquez used Magical Realism elements to showcase supernatural beings, and to teach valuable lessons. Within the themes of both stories a strong moral component is found. To get the point of this moral across, Marquez uses distinct writing techniques. He paints the picture of his setting through his descriptive language, but, not all of his stories are exactly the same! This is what makes them such a delight to read; the different workings that make up each individual story are beautiful on their own, but can be compared to each other.

    Read More

  • Literary Analysis "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    1058 Words  | 3 Pages

    Gabriel Marquez published "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" in the collection Leaf Storm, in 1955 (David). "Gabriel García Márquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, on March 6, 1928. Historically, the country was a rural nation of landlords, peasants, villages, and small towns. The history is deeply rooted in the culture and this culture has a strong influence on García Márquez's fiction." (Tillburg, Elizabeth Van, and Kelly Goodall). Marquez became inspired to write his stories based on where he grew up, Columbia. Marquez possibly was poor as a child. Connecting to Pelayo and Elisenda who were in poverty in their small village.

    Read More

  • Use of Magical Realism in Chronicle of a Death Foretold

    1409 Words  | 3 Pages

    "What came to dominate the story and to leave a lasting impression was the view of man as a mystery surrounded by realistic data. A poetic divination or denial of reality. Something that for lack of a better word could be called magical realism."  -Uslar Pietri

    Read More

  • The Dilemma Of A Ghost By Ama Ata Aidoo

    693 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Dilemma of a Ghost is a short play written by the Ghanaian writer, Ama Ata Aidoo. The story is about a young Ghanaian man, Ato, currently studying in America. Here, he meets and falls in love with Eulalie; an African-American girl who lives in America. When he returns home with his new bride, Ato is torn between his family’s traditional custom against his wife’s western culture. His marriage and his wife’s behaviour become sources of great criticism from both family members and the Ghanaian community at large. The writer uses various scenarios to point out the difference between the African traditional culture and the modern western culture.

    Read More

More about Magical and Realistic Elements in The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship

Open Document