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

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Giants and Angels roam the pages of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”, and “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World”, creating the perfect scene for magical realism. Many of the elements within these stories coincide with each other; this has everything to do with the overall component of magical realism, which binds together similarities and sets apart differences. The theme of each story can be found within the other and can stand by itself to represent the story it belongs to, the settings are similar in location and the ability to change but different in their downsides and the writing style is so similar it is complicated to find any differences. Marquez is a master story-teller whose works of art can only be compared with each other. The general theme of “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” is “Let things run their natural course; don’t bring conflict upon yourself by trying to defy nature”. When the angel comes, the very wise old woman tells them that he must be here to take their child but they don’t listen to her intelligent advice. “Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of spiritual conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop”. Pelayo defies nature by not letting the Angel go, and hence the Angel is locked up “as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal”. At the end of the story the wife watches the angel fly away and realizes that now he is now longer an annoyance in her life. If the... ... middle of paper ... ...ng style for these stories are how Marquez placed magical realism within them. In the first story there is an angel, and in the next there is a dead giant. In the first story the people mock the element of magical realism and in the second they praise and honor him. Marquez wrote these two stories differently, to fit their needs. 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.

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