The Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain in Macondo describes a story of the young woman, Isabel, and her family. The entire story revolves around the binary of fantasy and reality. The situation Isabel is involved in seem like that of a dream. On Page 93 she says, “…I heard my mother’s voice warning me from her room that I might catch pneumonia. Only then did I realize that the water was up to my ankles, that the house was flooded, the floor covered by a think surface of viscous, dead water.” If this were real life someone would immediately notice they were in ankle high water. Also on page 91 she is speaking to her husband: “It doesn’t look as if it will ever clear,” but when she looked toward the voice she found only an empty chair. Isabel is not actually awake and she is just dreaming this is happening in the fantasy in her dream.
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is basically an allegory of religion. The old man with wings who fell from the sky in a terrible storm is held captive in the town. The assumptions of the people is that he is an angel who “should be mayor of the world or a five- star general in order to win all wars,” but he priest takes him for a fraud because he does not speak Latin (Pg. 205). Also on page 205 Marquez’s says, “He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary.” This religious statement is referring to the angel is using tricks to confuse the innocent town people. He may look like an angel but his intentions may be that of the devil. Pelayo and Elisenda began charging five cents admission to see the creature. There was a comparison made between the old man with wings and the mischievous girl who was struck by lightning and turned into a spider. On page 208 Marquez says, “…a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in two and through the crack came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider.” The strike of a lightning bolt is symbolism of God. God is known to spit people when they sin by hitting them with a lightning bolt.
“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” is about a desolate community who is cut off from the rest of the world. They see the boats go by but no one comes. They only know people from nearby villages. It was like the society was waiting for someone or something to give them meaning. When the largest and most handsome man in the world came to their town, they gave him the name Esteban. The women fought over his name but “the silence put an end to any last doubts: he was Esteban.” (Pg. 233) On page 232 it says, “…thinking that for all their [men] lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth.” The women began to realize how insignificant they were and they needed this man to have some self- worth. This is why they made their town the biggest, most good looking place to be after they put him in ocean. The large man gave meaning to their lives. This could be a metaphor for how God gave meaning in so many people’s lives. God gave purpose and made people change how they acted or thought about everything.
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(Addition) In all three stories, Garcia Marquez fused together ideas about religion, social systems in society, and human nature. God is spoken of in all three stories, which is directly related to religion. Pertaining to the social system, religion seems to be at the top. In all of the stories religion is held to in high respect, as well as the figures associated with religion such as the priest. In the last two stories, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” human nature is a key concept discussed. When townspeople are given someone who is considered to be abnormal, how do they treat that figure? Did they treat him/ her with respect and fairness, or did they not?
ReplyDelete(Addition) The “Monologue of Isabel Watching it Rain” brings up the binary of life and death. When Marquez speaks of the cow that cannot move in the mud, he is really speaking of life and death. When referring to the cow Marquez says “then she stood motionless for half an hour, as if she were already dead but could not fall down because the habit of being alive prevented her,” (Pg. 92) It seems as if the cow is in a state of purgatory, which is a metaphor for Isabel’s life. Isabel seems to be in a state of purgatory because she can’t distinguish between whether she is alive or dead. Isabel believes she is alive but the situations that keep happening to her such as the ankle high water or Martin vanishing makes it seem like she is dead. By the end of the story she has had the revelation that she is in a “perfect state which must have been very much life death,” (Pg. 96) but what state is this? Is she actually stuck in Purgatory, since the state she is in is similar to that of death?
(Addition) There is a theme of religion in the story because it began with a mass and ended with a mass. At the beginning of the story Marquez says, “…happy that the rain would revive the thirsty rosemary and nard in the flowerpots after seven months of intense summer and scorching dust (Pg. 90). The water was viewed as pure or sacred, as if it were a gift from the Gods, but it soon turned out to be a curse more than a blessing. It says, “I saw my father sitting in a rocker, his painful vertebrae resting on a pillow and his sad eyes lost in the labyrinth of the rain.” (Pg. 91) Since Marquez uses the word Labyrinth, he is referring to the family being trapped in the rain because in a Labyrinth you are trapped and there is no way to get out. Someone who had no reason to know said that, “The train hasn’t been able to cross the bridge since Monday. It seems that the river carried away the tracks.” The rain itself is the labyrinth because it is trapping the people in the town. The rain destroyed the only route to escape and had flooded the church. This rain that was first viewed as a blessing was now a terrible curse, a curse that created a labyrinth for the whole town.
ReplyDelete(Addition) Since the priest is held in such high esteem, the townspeople respect and honor his words. Again Marquez is using religion as a main aspect in his story. This time though he is referring to the social structure in society and how the priest is at the top of that social network. Since the priest is respected so much, is word is honored across the village. When the man with enormous wings first comes, the townspeople were “tossing him things to eat though openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.” (Pg. 205) This just goes to show that someone who is different is society is treated as an outsider. The people don’t know who this “angel” is or if he is even a higher power, but they don’t have the common decency and respect to find out. Just because he looks different they can’t give him any respect. If that was another normal looking “human,” who looked like he had just drowned, most of the people would be lending a hand to help that person. So why is it so different if the person is a bit abnormal? When the priest went into the coop to check out the old man he talked to him in Latin, the language of God. When the old man couldn’t understand the language the God, the priest immediately started to state everything that could make him not an angle; “he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels.” (Pg. 205) The people listened to everything the priest had to say, because he was the closest hand of God, the one who was suppose to know if someone was an angel. The townspeople listened and locked the old man up as if he were some kind of “animal.” This story is a metaphor for how society views people. People who are well respected in society and high up on the social network are society’s “norms,” while anyone on the lower end is viewed as an outcast for some abnormality.
(Addition) “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” represents the binary between life and death. When he [Esteban] floats up onto the shore of the insignificant and desolate town, he immediately changes the atmosphere in the town. Before he arrived the town was unknown and small, but his presence brought meaning into the lives of the townspeople. The women began to fantasize about him, and how he was so big, so strong, and far more superior to the rest of the men in their town. On page 232 it says, “…thinking that for all their [men] lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth.” The women were obsessed with him, but why was this? He was just a dead man. To the women though he was actually alive, and his spirit was giving them hope for a better future. It didn’t matter if he was dead because he didn’t look dead to the townspeople. The women did not see him as dead because, “he did not have the lonely look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of men who drowned in rivers” (Pg. 231) The women begin to pamper him by making “some pants form a large piece of sail and a shirt from some bridal Brabant linen so that he could continue through his death with dignity.” (Pg. 232) They wanted to give him some self- respect because of the amount of respect they had for him. It didn’t matter if he was dead or alive, because the image they [the women] had created off him, made him the most noble, strongest, and desirable man they have ever known. Everyone in the town, women, men, and children, all began to worship this man, this man who had brought hope to their community. On page 236 it says, “They let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished.” The townspeople hope that one day he will return home. They transformed their town so that “their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare whisper the big boob finally died.” On page 235 it says, “They only had to take the handkerchief off his face to see that he was ashamed, that it was not his fault that he was so big or so heavy or so handsome, and if he had known that this was going to happen, he would have looked for a more discreet place to drown in…” They made their town larger so he would never have to feel ashamed again, and he could come back and live in peace. They made everything fit to his size, in hope that one day, in the future, he would come back, and say that this was his home.
ReplyDelete(Addition) “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” may be referring to religion. Esteban was classified as this great man who gave self- worth and meaning for the people, just as God did. On page 231, the women proclaim he was “the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen…” This description makes its seem like he is a greater man than anyone, in every aspect possible. He is a dead man and he is being treated better than any other man in the village. There is an essence about him, which is quickly noticed by all of the women. The women first notice his appearance which leads to the imagination of his personality. The more the women fantasize about Esteban, the more important he becomes, and the more he begins to seem like a God. On page 235 he [Esteban] is viewed as “more than a man but less than a God.” His presence is similar to that of God. He brought meaning and self- worth to this town, and he wasn’t even alive. The entire village is rebuilt in Esteban’s memory, hoping one day he would come back and save them once again.
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