Ye Ji Park / 111053 / 12v1
Mr. Garrioch
World Literature
April 15 2013
Reading
Journal: The Handsomest Drowned Man and
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
–
How Marquez “Freshly” Delivers Obvious Truth –
Stories for
children often deal with very simple, self-evident truth. Cinderella tells that
reward follows endurance, and Snow White warns about the danger of vanity and
jealousy. Lessons from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s two stories for children, “The
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, also
seem quite obvious.
"The
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" portrays the power of admiration that
changes the community. The name Esteban reminds of Saint Stephen, the first
Christian martyr who was stoned to death after delivering a speech about atrocities
of Jewish authorities. [1] Considering the status “martyr”, Esteban must have sacrificed
for the townspeople, which made them conduct a delicate funeral in return. So
what is this mercy that Esteban show on the townspeople?
It is the
transformation of the village. Because of their pure admiration, pity, and love
toward Esteban, the villagers cannot forget about him even after the funeral.
They are determined to change their houses with "wider doors, higher
ceilings, and stronger floors", fronts painted in “gay colors", backs
dug for “planting flowers”, just to make Esteban’s memory eternal. The town,
once so dry and barren – "made up of … wooden houses that had stone
courtyards with no flowers" and "spread about on the end of a
desert-like cape" – is transformed into the village where "the Sun's
so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn". The process
of beautiful transformation through Esteban the martyr, a mythical and magical
figure, reminds readers a forgotten value of a single person's power to
influence the whole community.
"A Very Old Man with
Enormous Wings" suggests another valuable learning that people tend to
ignore easily. At the start of the story, the townspeople judge that an old man
is an angel, just because he has enormous wings. With this hasty conclusion
about his identification, the townspeople are disappointed when the old man
does not fit to the standards of angel they think of. Father Gonzaga, for example,
denies the angel because "he did not understand the language of God or
know how to greet His ministers”. People then start to act cruelly against the
angel; they confine him to a chicken coop, pull out feathers, throw stones, and
even burn his side. Even when the man practices “miracles” an angel might do, such
as presenting the blind man three new teeth, the paralytic chance of almost
winning the lottery, or Pelayo and Elisenda five cents charge from the
spectators, the townspeople stick on their once-made judgment that this man is
not a respectable creature, asserting that those miracles were "more like
mocking fun".
The woman who
turned into a spider for having disobeyed her parents gains much more attention
than the angel. This is because the metamorphosis is congruent with people's criteria
of what a disobedient child deserves. By presenting clear contrast between the
attitudes people treat the spider woman and the angel, Marquez shows how unfair
people can be once they decide that something is out of their standards. In
other words, the lesson from "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is that
it is not reasonable to value something based on subjective criteria.
§
Okay,
readers think, we gained good lessons from his stories. But did he have to
employ magical elements to deliver such obvious lessons? After all, Marquez
could tell about the change an admirable martyr can bring and the danger of
valuing a person hastily without presenting Esteban, the angel, or the spider
woman.
What makes
Marquez so special is that he knew the power to present self-evident truths
with a fresh insight through noble means. I myself had experienced this power
in my junior year: I once participated in the campaign, which sought to deliver
“Do not dump trash”, “Try to use personal cup than disposable paper cup”, those
mundane messages. The way messages were delivered, however, was not mundane at
all: instead of asking for signs to the passengers as usual, we performed a
short play that demonstrates environmental damages trash and disposables bring.
Despite its common messages, the campaign was successful because they were
delivered in such a fresh way that caught people’s attention. I believe this is
similar to Marquez’s success; because he used surprising, new, and alien
magical elements, readers could gain a new insight.
Bruce
Holland Rogers, an American short fiction writer, said: "[Magic realism]
... remind us that the world is surprising and seemingly full of design and
purpose." [2] In this sense, Marquez truly deserves his title as a master
of magic realism. Through the use of magical elements, Marquez successfully
reminded people the valuable lessons that are so self-evident, yet so easily forgotten.
(778
words)
References
