Reading Journal: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World and An Old Man with Enormous Wings

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.

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   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

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Stephen

[2] http://www.writing-world.com/sf/realism.shtml