Skip to main content

Critical Analysis of A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez




The story is written along the lines of Magic Realism and refers to a couple Pleyano and Elsendna who discover a man with enormous wings covered with grime and lying covered with mud. Is he an angel or a supernatural being or just a man masquerading as an angel? Marquez using the technique of magic realism portrays him as an angel.

Soon a crowd of people assemble in the house to watch the actions of the angel. The hoi polloi are rife with speculations about the angel's plight. Some rant that he is a part of a supernatural conspiracy. Others accept that he belongs to the underworld. The crowds flock to the house to seek his blessings. Soon Pelyano and Elsenda lock him in a chicken coop and start charging a fee for watching this supernatural being. The parish priest also interferes and dispatches a letter to Rome seeking to give a status to this angelic being. Pelyano and Elsenda become rich and change their lodgings to a double storey house. They come to a point where they want to get rid of the angel as they have become fed up of it. To their surprise new feathers sprout on the wings of the angel and one fine day it makes a flight and disappears.

As a technique of magic realism the portrayal of the angel becomes a fiction where belief is left to the credibility of the readers. One has to be convinced that fairy tales are true. The reader has to force his or her imagination to live to the standards of fiction. The enigma of the created angel does not surprise the reader or astonish him or her. Marquez exploits the older genres of the fairy tale to create this bizarre concoction.

The creation of the Angel proceeds from Marquez' hotchpotch Catholic beliefs and becomes an amalgamation of an archetype that has a cosmic dualism of the divine and the profane. This can be seen as a conjecture of a writer coming to terms with writing a fiction that is highly immature. All of the content in his fiction is highly hyperbolic and has the ambience of an aura that is carnal and frivolous. The creation of the archetype proceeds from the unconscious of the writer. Archetypes have a rational explanation that is a sublimation of unconscious instincts to a more conceivable and acceptable norm. On the one hand we can conceive his depiction of the angel to the fallen one and on to the other a human portrayed with majestic features. There is a gutter in the grandiose, a gutter with puddles of angelic fallibility.

The couple who discover the fallen angel belong to the proletariat. Their aspirations are caught up in the human thread for affluence. No doubt after the discovery of the angel, they rise in their social positions of class and become very rich by charging a fee to see the angel. The author has a false conception of class and promotes his ideal to belong to the bourgeoisie.

The plot of the story isn't at all convincing. After being covered with grime and mud, all of sudden new feathers sprout on his wings and he starts to fly. There isn't a credible plot at all. Postmodern fiction is moving to a realm of creating stories where the plot is a minimal construct. For one thing an angel is fiction and his resuscitation from the fallen to flight can be considered as a hyperbolic fictional adornment.
 
 

Popular posts from this blog

Kecemburuan semacam ini

Jacey melemparkan cangkir kopi kaca, (Mug Kaca Berinsulasi Dinding Ganda Zwilling), melintasi dapur. Itu menghantam dinding yang baru dicat (Behr, Sweet Coconut Milk, M230), dan hancur menjadi triliunan kepingan. "Inilah yang telah kamu lakukan pada kami!" teriaknya, suaranya berderak karena cemburu, kuku jarinya yang terawat (Orly Cold As Ice - perawatan bernapas + warna) menusuk udara ke arah tumpukan puing-puing kaca. Blayne menundukkan kepalanya, dagu keduanya mengenai dadanya terlebih dahulu. "Maaf, sayang," gumamnya. "Maaf?! Maaf!" Dia mengambil sekotak Wheat Thins dan mengangkatnya di atas kepalanya. "Tolong jangan melempar yang lain!" Blayne memohon, berdiri dari posisi setengah duduk di bangku logam di dapur. Ini adalah bangku yang sangat tidak nyaman (Bangku Meja Grejsi dengan Bingkai Logam), tetapi Jacey menyukai cara logam itu memantulkan sinar matahari di sore hari, jadi itulah yang dia beli. Dia mencondongkan tubuh ke arahnya,...

Thirteenth step

My grandmother attends the church basement on Tuesday evenings. I saw him there among the metal folding chairs and antique coffee pots, his figure trembling under the fluorescent lights that buzzed like dying insects. She wears the same powder blue pullover she was buried in, the one with pearl buttons that catch the light like little moons. Others can't see it, of course. They just feel a sudden chill as they pass by where she is, or smell the ghostly smell of her Shalimar perfume mixing with the smell of burnt coffee that never leaves these rooms. But I see clearly. He's been following me to AA meetings for three months since I got my first white chip after five years of being back in the bottle. "Your grandmother was my godmother in 1985," old Pete told me after tonight's meeting, hands shaking as he poured a seven-pack of Sweet'n Low into his coffee. "Toughest godmother I ever had. She saved my life." "Mine, too," I said, not specif...

A-Z of Corporate Governance Law

Corporate governance law can be seen as the law that states the way a company is regulated and managed. Any student of law must have a clear idea about the corporate governance law. This article provides an insight into the law, along with its importance. Corporate governance law  describes how a company will be managed and governed. This topic is an important one for any student pursuing a degree in law. They may also receive academic papers to write on it. Hence, individuals should be clear about this law. The article aims at clarifying the idea behind the law and why it is important. What exactly is corporate governance law? A business is directed and controlled by the system of corporate governance. It is a process for governing a company, establishing the policies, customs, and laws for all employees, starting from the highest to the lowest levels. It states the distribution of responsibilities and rights among the various participants in a company like the di...