Very Old Man With Enormous Wings And The Handsomest Drowned Man

The title of Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” says it all about the character who will turn the life of Pelayo, a simple villager, upside down when he discovers the mystery man in his backyard. The story demonstrates the coexistence of cruelty and compassion within humans and the way they react towards what’s considered as different.

The reader can tell that this man is not just some neighbor, but instead something that was not completely human and something peculiar.

The old man from the story A very old man with enormous wings and Esteban from the story The Handsomest drowned man in the world are opposites of each other, maybe the only similarity that they have is that they are both flat and static characters. First, they are different in terms on how they are portrayed. The old man who is an angel, was portrayed as an ugly old man who doesn’t even resemble an angel. We can see this in paragraph 2, “He was dressed like a rag picker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth…” While Esteban who is a only a dead guy was portrayed as a good looking guy.

In his short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez tells the story of an ordinary village and how their inhabitants’ lives change after encountering the sudden arrival of a strange, winged man. The old man, referred to as an angel by the villagers, becomes a widely renown attraction despite his lack of identity and comprehension. As a writer of magic realism, Marquez strives to incorporate the old man’s supernatural character as an allusion to Christ and, as a result, gives way to the old man’s poor physical condition, humble personality, status as a popularized foreigner, and miraculous behavior.

Although both short stories, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, were written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there are many other differences between the two tales. Both stories were about men who arrived in foreign places and how these men were treated by the people who found them. The old man from the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and Esteban from the story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” are apparently opposites of each other.

But some said, “Will the Christ come out of Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?” So was a division among the people because of Him. (John 41-44, NKJV).

Sympathy between humans stretches a far distance, but for other beings more extraordinary compassion is thrown away at the first sight of difference. Between the two supernatural beings in Gabriel Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, one gets more kindness and awe from the ordinary people because of her human origins; while the other supernatural being, an old man with wings, is mistreated. The differences between the two being’s origins portray human nature and its detriments. That is the human nature Marquez portrays in the villagers treatment of the two paranormal beings. Treatment of supernatural beings by humans depends on an explanation of their origin and how they came about.

For instance, at the beginning of the story when Pelayo and Elisenda discover the old man lying down in their courtyard, they become surprised with his unknown appearances and huge wings and find him somehow different from all. Leading by their curiosity and intrigue, the couple calls a neighbor lady that as soon as she sees him, proclaims that he is an angel and a supernatural creature (Marquez 357). In consequence, the whole neighborhood finds out about the old man and start

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” written by Gabriel García Márquez was a short story he wrote about a man, later named Esteban, that was washed up onto the shore of a small Colombian village that was void of all imagination and beauty. The women took in this drowned man and cleaned him up. The women realized he was massive and the most beautiful thing they ever saw, but the men saw him as a piece of meat. When the men saw the face of Esteban they had a change of mind. The drowned man made the whole village realize beauty is an amazing thing and they throw the most beautiful funeral for him. Márquez has the appearance of the drowned man change the village because he wants to show how a small thing can have

In the two short stories, “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Garbriel Márquez, the authors demonstrate why society should evolve, Jacobs and Márquez achieve this similarly through characters performing egotistical acts; however, the authors’ strategies diverge as Márquez’s characters are dynamic whereas Jacobs’ are static, and Jacobs’ employs fear whereas Márquez uses hope.

Elements of the magical and the mundane are interwoven seamlessly into the story and in a way that doesn’t seem unusual to the characters. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,”another short story of magical realism written by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez is about this dead, extremely tall, big and strong man who washes up a shore at this small village somewhere in Latin America. He is able to take the simplicity of this dead man and make him seem larger than life both literally and figuratively. By the same token, his other short story in which is mentioned earlier, he describe this man in this courtyard with “huge buzzard wings,” with “few teeth,” who also had an “unbearable smell,” that looked like he was “dressed as a ragpicker.” Marquez is able to create this image of this magical creature with wings, but at the same time is able to make him seem more as like a human rather than this majestic creature he really is. A great thing about magical realism is that it takes a metamorphosis and makes it feel real.

Through the use of magical realism, Marquez shows us the absurdidity of people’s actions. The large man with enormous wings converys people’s misunderstanding of the unknown. Although the large man is thought to be an angel, because of his grotesque looks and awkward nature the townspeople treat him poorly. They shame the creature in various ways. This shows

In the story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez intertwines the supernatural with the natural in an amazing manner. This essay analyzes how Marquez efficiently utilizes an exceptional style and imaginative tone that requests the reader to do a self-introspection on their life regarding their responses to normal and abnormal events.

In the story “A Very Old Man With Wings”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes about the

Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World” achieves powerfully fantastic story-telling. As the story begins, we are met with the discovery of a floating corpse at sea that shores itself on an unassuming village’s beach. The drowned man is not of the village, which quickly piques the villagers curiosities. The villagers acknowledged him as a stranger among them, “…when they found the drowned man they simply had to look at one another to see that they were all there.” No one had seen him before.