Jeff Wright: Garcia Marquez

Garcia Marquez displays magic realism through blending the fantasy with reality. He integrates these ideas throughout his short stories with social and political issues. In "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", an angel falls from the sky due to a heavy rainstorm. When he is found, the people of the village are shocked to see an angel, yet they never question his existence.

The angel that fell to Earth saved the desperately poor family. Prior to encountering the angel, the family’s child was deathly ill, had a high fever, and was unable to eat. Shortly after Elisenda and Pelayo, the mother and father, locked up the angel, their child “woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat (pg.204).” In addition to bringing health to the family, the angel brought great wealth to the poor family. The next morning, Elisenda and Pelayo found a large gathering outside their chicken coop. They took this opportunity to charge an admission to see the angel.

At the beginning of the story, the “wise” neighbor insists that the angel be killed because “angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy (pg.204).” However, the family “did not have the heart to club him to death.” Towards the end of the story, after the family had received all they needed from the angel (a two-story mansion, netting to keep out the crabs, bars on the windows to keep angels out), the family became fed up with the angels presence. That following winter, the angel becomes very ill and the townspeople try to decide what to do with a dead angel. However, as spring approaches, the angel becomes healthy again and flies away. It is possible that the angel represents a miracle descending onto Earth, yet he is not portrayed that way in the story. He is an old, unsightly man who is unknown to everyone. The village people know as much about him when he arrives as they do when he leaves.

The “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo” is a story of how a town is destroyed by a long period of rain. Marquez compares the supernatural rain to a labyrinth. The towns people are slowly overcome and destroy the townspeople’s lives. In this story, Marquez uses the binary of space and time. Although the destruction is happening right in front of their eyes, Isabel, her father, and the rest of the townspeople accept the fact that nothing can be done and almost live in an undead state. The rain changes the townspeople’s perception of time and makes the events seem much more profound and devastating. At one point, Isabel says she was experiencing “a state which must have been very much like death (pg.96).”

Garcia Marques makes use of social forces that control a society and the inexistence (or suppression) of time to create magical yet believable stories.