A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Garca Mrquez - Book Report/Review Example

Analysis of García Márquez’s A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings One of the most striking aspects of the twentieth century genre of magic realism is that it surpasses any other previous literary traditions that might be of similar scope and reach, and accords well with the flow of the narrative technique. By definition, magic realism forecasts the unexpected, triggering a chain of least anticipated events normally within a plot which is austerely predictable and realistic. The “altered perception of the natural” it provides belies the natural itself (Concilio 18). Moreover, the characteristic components of reality are sometimes interlarded with providential phenomena, marking a fantastical digression into rambling narratives. For the readers, it presents a situation similar to that of playing a cat and mouse game. They do not know what to expect at what time and the more the plot advances, the more the author’s intentions become apparent. The iconic Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez is widely regarded to among the most prolific exponents of magic realism. García Márquez’s works abound with the use of this literary device. Be it his magnum opus One Hundred Years of Solitude or the short novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold, Márquez’s literary works interplay between the ordinary and the extraordinary with effortless ease, rendering a sense of the perpetual to the otherwise mortal frames of existence. This paper is going to respond to a set of questions related to García Márquez’s famous short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, which was written in 1968. This short story, along with many others, captures the essence of the author’s exploration of magic realism as it seeps through the very many intertextual references to events of inexplicable dimension, the possibility of which is only to be imagined but not to be considered on rational grounds. The thesis question in relation to the analogies drawn out from the reading centers on the author’s attempt to make a departure from the providential interventions commonly embedded in magic realism. Thus, the paper will argue about the void experienced on a human-divine interface. The beginning of the story arouses an expectation of something divine to happen. The sick child, the rain and the crabs create an atmosphere of suffering, which the reader expects to get resolved by the appearance of the winged man. However, the juxtaposition of human and angelic qualities creates a unique effect: the reader is not sure whether the strange creature will be successful in its supposedly divine mission. Moreover, the shabby appearance and helpless lot of the creature conjures an image of a ‘fallen angel’. I felt that the angel’s appearance is meant to cure the child, only to be proved wrong later on. At the middle of the story, the progressive degeneration and decay in the winged man’s image, along with the fact that Pelayo and Elisenda use him as a commodity to be sold at a market, come as a surprise. These arouse sympathy for the helpless and subhuman creature. If we consider the insult heaped on the creature while he is shown off as a circus exhibit as well as the ultimate cease to that disrespect when the spider woman arrives, the ending of the story comes as no surprise. It seems quite obvious that the man will fly away once he has seen the winter through. His flight is his freedom. An immediate reaction to the short story is that of surprise and sadness – surprise at the appearance of the winged man and the spider woman, two examples of a fusion of the human and the beastly. The muddy, ‘buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked’ (Curtis 13), take away any notion of beauty and divinity that the reader might form; the winged man is as angelic as beastly. A sense of sadness also pervades the story. The insult and commoditization of the old man, as well as the way in which he is taken for granted and shooed away by Elisenda once his commercial value has been utilized, evoke a sense of poignant melancholy. I think the most interesting point and the central issue of the story is the question of acceptance or rejection of the divine, by human beings whose psyche is ruled by material, worldly and commercial values. Pelayo and Elisenda’s actions are controlled by the above-mentioned ideals and motives. Márquez seems to mean that the human world, engrossed in its material and selfish ideals, can only mock the divine as well as the beastly. While naive, selfish people pluck off the winged man’s plumes to heal themselves of their diseases and ailments, people like Pelayo cash in on the situation and make the most of it. The single most crucial event, I think, is that the bishop and Father Gonzaga cannot, till the end, identify if the winged visitor is actually an angel or not. This shows that the human mind cannot really fathom things beyond its immediate knowledge. As a result, the naive people utilize the appearance of the old man to embark on some merry-making and trade. He might be an angel, he might also be a flying Norwegian. The people ought to find out what he is and treat him accordingly. Instead, they indulge in their foolish acts, not knowing what they should do, not finding out the truth. But here we come across a peculiarity of the magic-realism genre - Márquez does not explain the nature of the old man, he leaves us in doubt. The whole story is built on this uncertainty. As in other stories by Márquez, the setting is typically hybrid. Elements of folklore, dark magic and medievalism are injected into a mid-twentieth century Columbian village, where troops with guns and bayonets are deployed. The bolt of lightning that created the human tarantula is an element of medieval storytelling, carried down through generations by folklore. If we take a look at Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of unfinalizabity, we will find that an individual cannot be conceptualized as final, or can never be understood fully (Bell and Gardiner 149). Though it is possible to understand people and to treat them as if they are completely known, Bakhtin’s conception of unfinalizability does not count out the possibility that a person can undergo changes, and that a person’s entity is never fully disclosed to the world, which is apparent in the old man’s initial failure in the role of an angel and his ultimate success in growing wings and flying away. The scene unfolding at Pelayo’s courtyard is an example of a Bakhtinian carnival, where existing and accepted hierarchies are subverted (Clark and Holquist 297-9). The common people treat the supposed angel like a caged animal, though they are supposed to go weak in their knees when facing a divine being. I do not know whether Márquez was familiar with Bakhtin’s literary theories while writing the story, but I must also point out the fact that Pelayo’s courtyard is a classic example of the Bakhtinian concept of grotesque realism (Coronato 9). The satiric depiction of the old man in the hen-cage dwells on the grotesque body engaged in the most basic needs and activities like eating, drinking and defecating. While medievalism and magic bring a sense of mystery into the story, the grotesqueness adds a dose of disrespect, arousing sympathy. The old man is undoubtedly the central character of the short story. The narrative is centered on his sudden appearance, experience, and sudden exit. He has massive effect on the people and institutions around him. Pelayo and Elisenda sell him off to procure huge wealth, Father Gonzaga tries in vain to control the response of the crowd that gather to see him, and the clergy fails to establish his true identity. He becomes the centre of a profitable trade and is the focal point of the village’s attention for quite some time. However, his financial profitability is challenged by the arrival of the human tarantula, as the entertainment hungry people flock to see her, abandoning the old man. The other characters in the story have no effect on him at all; they cannot feed him or make him do what they want. It is he who changes the fortune of others. He remains unchanged till Pelayo’s child grows up; after surviving the worst winter, he finds a new life and takes off on his wings, thus also creating his own future all on his own, so to speak. He is a self-complete being, misunderstood and unidentified, but with enormous potential for changing both his own self and the lives of others. There might be a relation between the child’s growing up and his flying away, though the author’s intention on this coincidence is not clear. The ‘magic’ elements in the story may seem to be unreliable. But the very concept of magic realism was formulated as a reaction to a Eurocentric literary theory. Márquez, one of the most influential exponents of the genre, uses the techniques of uncertainty, ambiguity, hybridity and open-endedness to create a narrative in which conventional spatio-temporal modes break down and multiple meanings emerge. The story is about many things at once – adverse human reaction to the divine, commercialization of any thing sellable, human tendency of looking for hype and entertainment, or the unfinalizability of the self and the potential of change hidden in every being. The author’s carefully crafted ambiguity gives the story this open-endedness. After intense reflection on this assigned story, I feel the author is trying to convey any and all of these points to the reader. Earlier, I had said that the most crucial event in the story is the clergy’s failure in identifying the old man. The ambiguity inherent in him, i.e., his unidentifiable language and the uncertainty regarding his status either as a human or as an angel, makes the clergy fail in their job. Their failure is not expressed in a single passage but is apparent all through the text. Even the doctor who examines the child cannot fathom the secret of his true nature. The setting and the sense of mystery created by the author, especially in line with the genre of magic realism, is responsible for this. The arrival of the human spider does indeed change the course of the story, but the attention showered upon the protagonist would have wavered after some time any which ways, after the people’s initial curiosity wore off. As regards the turning points of the story, the most important happening according to me is the child’s sickness. Albeit this is not a part of the plot itself, it initiates the narrative and builds the atmosphere which is later to be culminated into a full-fledged structural cohesion. Had this been not told, the purpose of the entire storytelling would have been annulled since rest of the thematic constructs is based on the old man’s apparent intent to cure the child. The other turning points occur in the course of the narrative, especially in the middle and near the end. The neighbor woman, the commoditization of the old man, his subsequent helplessness and struggle for survival, and his regeneration comprise the central episodes in the story. In essence, the most intriguing issue in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is the true nature of human understanding. Barring the divine, are we able to truly understand our minds and can we fully back our instincts when we claim the same? Márquez addresses it using a language which is dissociated from the context of “the majority” who “understood” the angel’s predicament (Curtis 16), but only to remain aloof. Works Cited Clark, Katerina, and Michael Holquist. Mikhail Bakhtin. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Concilio, Carmen. Conterminous Worlds: Magical Realism and Contemporary Post Colonial Literature in English. Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 1999. Coronato, Rocco. Jonson versus Bakhtin: carnival and the grotesque. Atlanta, Georgia: Rodopi, 2003. Curtis, C. Michael. Faith: stories. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2003. Read More