Three stories by Marquez, Dasha

In all three stories Gabriel Marquez is trying to show the Colombian society from the perspective of the oppressed poor. There is a lot of symbolism and concepts from magic realism that helps to portray the real face of low ranks of public. The idea of mystic and unusual things happening to ordinary people can be found throughout every story.

In A very Old Man with Enormous Wings Marquez tries to show the desperate society through a miracle that nobody takes serious. Readers are introduced to a lower class family who are trying to clean the house from crabs that are filling the house due to the vast rain. Everything seems normal until Pelayo finds a very old man lying in the mud of their yard and comes up with conclusion that he just found an angel because this man has huge wings on his back. Family decides to put him in the chicken coop and show off to everybody. I think there are multiple ways to interpret this. Lower class people are so depressed that even a sign from above or angel does not give them hope. When pilgrims come to see him they treat him as a circus animal, not as a miracle. Angel looks very human, he acquires earthly smells as he keeps spending time in the coop: “he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites…” (205). It seems that this people are so exploited by the corrupt government and surrounding environment that they gave up on religion. Also the wife starts to charge people for entrance. I would interpret it as unavoidable effects of bribery in the society. People are willing to do anything to improve their quality of life even if it includes giving up your beliefs, values, and ethics. This poor family steps over their religious beliefs and uses the angel as a path to better life. One can also see an angel as a symbol for Colombian people themselves. They are tired, sick and can barely survive during these hard times, and they feel trapped (Marquez shows it through the chicken coop). In the end there is still some hope that they will get better, that they will recover, just like angel eventually heels and takes his first flight after the coop breaks down:”stiff feathers began to grow on his wings” (210). It can be symbol for societal requirement s and boundaries that eventually loosen up and poor people get their chance to step up out of misery. There are other elements of magic realism such as people with mystical problems like a girl who was turned into a spider – this just enforces the power of human desperation in the hard political times.

In the story Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo magic realism’s binary between present, past and future is used to show that the lowest levels of society are stuck and can’t break through the oppression of corrupt government. They are stuck in this society just like characters in his story are caught in this non stopping rain and they can do nothing about it: “doesn’t look as if it will ever clear (91).” For Isabel all days feel the same nothing changes, the time sits still: “It wouldn’t surprise me now if they were coming to call me to go to last Sunday’s Mass (96).” People are stuck in this miserable state that it almost seems like they are dead: “a perfect state which must have been very much like death (96).” The idea that dead people are floating in the street create even more dreadful feeling and readers realize how terrible the living conditions of poor population are. This is introduced to us through a very mystic way, which enforced the influence of magic realism in this story. Again, the concept of labyrinth is shown. No matter where you go you will end up in the dead end. People lose the sense of what real and what is fantasy, their “senses had been filled with rain (90).”

In the story The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World Marquez is trying to show how the drowned man changes the face of the small village cut off the rest of the world. Marquez himself grew up in a small village next to the cost, so there is a lot of personal experience reflected in this story. This village is very poor and nobody knows what goes outside of their small little world. The children are so poor that they find playing with a dead man very entertaining. The villages get so excited that finally somebody else showed up in their lives that they start changing their ways of life. Magic realism comes into play when people try to create personality for this dead man. He seems so alive after they treat him. Just like in the second story, there seem to be no respect for religion. They are so desperate to meet somebody else from the outside world they don’t even care that he is dead. In a regular situation dead will be treated differently.