Marquez Stories

In the three stories Marques uses magic realism to criticize social norms and religious aspects of people’s lives. While Borges focused on blurring the boundary between reality and fantasy, Marques concentrates on the binary life and death. Marques’s stories, which are “children stories," attempt to expose to the reader the flaws of humanity. In the “Monologue of Isabel Watching It Rain in Macondo” Marquez uses magic realism to depict the flaws associated with one’s complete dependence upon religion.
The story opens with the scene of Isabel, the narrator, returning home with her family in a mass. During their journey home they were caught in a rainstorm. From this scene forward rain plays an important role, symbolizing religion. The rain engulfed Isabel and had a negative impact in her life. The rain “paralyzed, and drugged” her life, she became emotionless, and lifeless. Isabel lost sense of time and emotions, appearing mummified. Just as people are submersed into a religion the rain surrounded Isabel, eventually destroying the town and collapsing the church. The rain ultimately crippled and paralyzed Isabel, symbolic of her religion draining the life out her by its inescapable presence.
The story “Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” focused more on criticizing human’s social structures. Marquez uses magical realism in the story to not only blur the binary of life and death but also criticize the shallowness of society, and how they value one’s appearance above all else. In the story a drowned man washes ashore a small town on the coast. Once he is discovered and cleaned, the women begin to slave over his beauty and glamour. They become obsessed with his appearance, even redesigning their own town in his memory. In the story Marquez uses magic realism to exaggerate the superhuman qualities of he drowned man, describing him as so big and developed that “his house would have had the widest doors, the highest ceiling, and the strongest floor.” While the binary of life and death was blurred during the story, the drowned man was dead yet was worshiped as if he was alive, the main focus of this story is to expose the reader to the modern problem of societies obsession with outer appearance and beauty. The people in this village were so obsessed with looks that the wives agreed that they would leave their husbands for Esteban, a lifeless corpse.
Marquez blends binaries, and exaggerates certain traits in order to criticize and expose the reader to the flaws with society, mainly forcing the reader to make revelations about social and religious structures.