In the Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo, Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses magical realism to illuminate commonly held attitudes about religion and daily life. The social structure of the era was clearly balanced against the lower class and towards men. The servants of the house are only referred to as the Guajiro Indians, not by name, and Marquez uses them to display the powerlessness they have over their condition. On page 93, “The Guajiro Indians, shirtless and barefoot, with their pants rolled up to their knees, were carrying the furniture…one could see the cruelty of their frustrated rebellion, of their necessary and humiliating inferiority in the rain.” This shows that the held a stagnant place in society; lacking rights and opportunity to advance. They are seemingly stuck at their current place in society and are portrayed almost as savages. Where they live is in the mud, they are “have-nots” as compared to Isabel and her family. Male and female roles are also highly addressed. The men are portrayed as distant characters, never having strong or involved roles in the plot. This contradicts a typical notion of how a man should act. Marquez says on page 90, “My father occupied the same spot where he had been on Sunday afternoon…and he stayed there, sitting by the railing with his feet on a chair…” Later, Isabel is talking to her husband Martin, but when she turns to him, he was no longer there and it was only a voice. This shows how remote and inactive the men are as compared to the females. It reflects the typical machismo attitudes and stereotypes that exist in Latin America. The women are seen as weak and inferior to the overbearing and critical men. Isabel’s husband even replies to her, “That’s something you made up. Pregnant women are always imagining things.” This may be simply an externalized notion of what Isabel interprets his real words to mean, or it could be his literal words. The magical realism twist is that the audience is not sure of what reality is and what is not. The story is like a landscape of what is happening in her mind and the way she sees her life. It is timeless, ongoing, like she is stuck in purgatory. Religion is also mocked and appears as an important yet unreliable tradition. The society is enveloped in a heavy weight of religion and through this; death is always on their minds. The rain that falls perpetually is like a symbol of the weight and slow destruction of the life of the people. The rain starts to fall after mass one Sunday, and after the rain has been falling continuously for days, religion begins to crush the entire society. Marquez emphasizes, “It was learned that the church was flooded and its collapse expected… now we have to pray.” The rain increasingly dampens Isabel’s mood until she too is “up to her ankles in viscous, dead water”. This could signify that the emphasis on religion in society is drawn out and corrupted, and that it too will eventually be dead. Just as the rain slowly infringes on Isabel; the dead slowly began to rise from their graves and float in the streets. This is like an insult to religion as the people are unearthed and brought back, something only God should be able to control. There is a seeming natural force that acts contrary to God’s control, but God doesn’t intervene to make it okay.
In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Marquez employs magical realism by combining normal situations with fantastic events. This combination adds to the mystery of the story and forces the reader to question every scene with a discerning eye. The major binary that is addressed in this story is that between human and nonhuman. The dividing line is blurred so that both real humans with fantastic elements and nonhuman creatures with real elements seem to exist. For example, there is an old man with wings and a giant spider who used to be a human, both of whom are accepted as human characters. Marquez uses this story to criticize humankind’s exploitive and selfish nature. The entire story is based on this fault. Pelayo and Elisenda find an old, fragile, hurt angel in their courtyard. Instead of nursing it back to health and helping it to recover, they lock it in a cage with chickens and feed the angel mush and mothballs. When they realize that other people are fascinated by this supposed angel, Pelayo and Elisenda decide to charge money for visiting him. On page 206, “Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week they had crammed their rooms with money”. Though the angel continued to suffer in the cage and be abused by onlookers, nobody seemed to mind. When things are good, they thank God, but when things are bad, they act as though God has forsaken them. Marquez also criticizes religion in the story. The priest, Father Gonzaga, nearly refused to believe that the old man was an angel. He spoke of an imposter, and “spend their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin…” Marquez criticizes our judgmental nature and ironically, exposes it through the religious figures: those who are supposed to accept and love all. The priest is a figure in society who is supposed to uphold moral standards and be accepting of all. When Father Gonzaga first visits the angel, he is shocked, is in disbelief, and then judges the angel on his appearance. To make it worse, he even preaches a sermon about being ingenuous. Marquez also attacks religion by poking fun at the Christian practice of paying collections to the church. Pelayo and Elisenda, when poor, are praying on a miracle to save their child and are full of sorrow. As soon as this miracle occurs, and an angel lands in their yard, they overlook the good and the granting of that miracle to exploit it. Once they have money, Pelayo and Elisenda are greedy, careless, and ungrateful. Marquez is exposing the contradictory practices of people who claim to be followers of religion, yet they only do so when they need it.
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Marquez criticizes social structures and attitudes exposed through real yet magical events. The story combines elements of fantasy with reality to expose – and then unravel - common attitudes and assumptions. Marquez criticizes how people always think that “the grass is better on the other side”. In this small village, a drowned man shows up on the shore. The entire village focuses on this man and the effects he leaves, even as a dead man, change the village forever. As soon as the women see the drowned man in his full size, muscle, and look; they immediately forget about their own husbands and dream about what their life could have been like with the stranger. On page 232 Marquez explains, “They secretly compared him to their own men, thinking that for all their lives theirs was incapable of doing what he could do in one night”. The women became obsessed with the drowned man for his outward appearance: his brawn, height, cut nails, and shaved face. It is almost as though this was the first time that this isolated village had seen and experienced something better, something to want and strive for. It relates to the saying, “what you don’t know can’t hurt you”. After these villagers had been exposed to the fact that bigger, better, and stronger people and things exist, they would never return to normal. Marquez states on page 236, “But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors…” This shows the greediness of humans to always want more. Even if what one has is adequate, the bigger and more ostentatious product is desired. Garcia Marquez never reveals where the man is from – it’s almost as if he is some sort of gift given to them from some God-like action. It’s like he is criticizing God for creating all these new temptations and forcing them upon the people.
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