"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" --- STYLE

           
             Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" has a very direct style. For example Marquez's writes in the story, "Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff's club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, Pelayo and Elisenda were still killing crabs. A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat" (334). As we can see in the story Marquez's style is very straightforward and not up for interpretation. The author also creates this effect by keeping the story line in a chronological order. Marquez does not use flash forwards or flashbacks to tell the story. Marquez style of writing creates a magical idea but keeps it very real. The idea of Magical Realism is definitely present and shown in a unique way that does not leave much room for the reader to change or create their own idea of the story. 

           I also believe Marquez's work can be seen as an allegory. A reader could take the magical and realistic ideas in the story showing that each character, place and thing represent or symbolize multiple ideas. The enormous wings or the chicken coop can all represent different ideas. The chicken coop can represent the cage one has on their life. There are many examples that can be found in Marquez's story. This is one way the magical aspect can come into play.




Charters, Ann. The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2011. 334-338. Print.