Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author with an interesting imagination, wrote both "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." Both of these stories use magical realism to develop their themes. Magical realism is defined as a story containing magical events and exaggerations of characters in a realistic, down-to-earth environment. Both of Marquez" stories have strong characteristics of magical realism. He uses this to develop his stories into intriguing pieces of literature.
"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" contains many elements of magic. These elements include magical and bizarre events and also include some unusual humor. Being visited by many different people from around the world, the angel brought upon some very odd human beings. A woman who visited the angel had the ailment of constantly counting her heartbeats but she became confused when she ran out of numbers. Another man complained of insomnia from the fact that the stars made too much noise. An extremely bizarre event arose when a "ram-sized" tarantula with the face of a woman appeared. The author also chose to toy with some unusual humor. When the angel was first found, he had " dialect with a strong sailor voice." After hearing this, Pelayo and Elisenda immediately looked past the wings and thought of him as a lost seaman. Another piece of bizarre humor occurred when the author said they " did not have the heart to club him to death." Referring to the angel, this is an extremely odd, yet, capturing statement.
This story also added many elements of realism into the text. A true-to-life setting was established in the first paragraph with the description of the day. Being a rainy, gray, generally depressing day shows how a typical stormy day can feel. The crabs in the beginning of the story added a sense of true-to-life setting. In many coastal towns of South America, crab infestations become notorious at certain times of the year.
