Doubts in Magic: How Marquez Makes Realism and Magic Doubtful

Note: This post discusses a reading. It is linked here for reference. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children by Gabriel Garcia Marquez 

There is a struggle to understand the concept of magical realism as a mode of literature. It is allusive and often very heard to define in terms of traditional literary terms. By reading a short story by one of the legends of magical realism, we can consider how useful this device, this troupe, this idea can be in saying something very important in terms of literature. 

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children by Gabriel Marquez brings to light the duplicity that can drawn out in magical realism. It is skepticism, belief, vision, and doubt all constantly swirling about what seems like poetry, fiction, parable, and doubt wrapped into one short story. 

As for the reader, part of what Marquez does so well is adding the possible with the impossible and allow the readers to judge those things on their own merits. In the opening lines: 

"On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross he drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench." 

While this is a strange event, it is very possible to imagine this kind of event happening, particularly in a tropical climate. What is interesting in the idea that these are difficult times, rain, crabs, and fever all build significant tension. It is when the main character, Pelayo finds an old man with wings, face down in the yard that we begin to see how the magical and the realism meet each other, seeking nothing more than an active curiosity of the reader. Between the flood of crabs and the crashed old man in the yard, nothing is amazing, but nothing is normal either. In fact, the old man with wings is dressed "like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had." The magical becomes normalized and accepted. Every possible insight into something extraordinary is then undercut with a healthy dose of reality. When they describe his being stuck in the chicken coup, he is seen "as if [he] weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal."

And everyone who sees the old man with wings comes to the same conclusion, that while it is different, it can't be magical. The church arrives on the Father Gonzaga realizes that he isn't an angel when he doesn't speak the language of the church (Latin) and doesn't respond to him appropriately. And he notices, "that seen up close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels." 

This story gives us a constant measure of how we perceive things and how they hold up to the skeptic, to the church, to the reality of the world. If you think of this story as magical, then everyone is a skeptic and whatever magic is happening is merely incidental to the ways the people abuse, ignore and cast off the miraculous elements happening. If this is a story about realism, it is about finding a hoax, seeing something that is possible but likely impossible. And in the end, something that may have never happened. 

In terms of the reader, it is an opportunity. If you are a realist and skeptic, you might side with the villagers and see this convoluted creature as a mere oddity, sideshow, natural oddity. There is even skepticism in the title. It isn't "The Angel with Enormous Wings" it is titled A Very Wold Man with Enormous Wings. Yet, if you are a believer in magical possibilities, this is a better read. While you are considering the scoffers, you can consider that not all magical things are what we expect. In fact, if the angel is there to take the feverish child (in the beginning) to death, it failed. But if he has come to save the child, he has succeeded. Marquez is constantly slipping back and forth through the elements of possible and impossible, magical and realism to make each sentence a puzzle to decode. 

This is a great text to contemplate the alternative ideas that are created here. For every magical idea, there is room for doubt. And the same could be said for every moment of realism, there is hope that magical things can be slightly tarnished, dirty or just a little tawdry.  

Atmosphere and Ecological Constructs / Part One

There has been a lot of conversations lately about crafting ecologies or places where our characters exist. And while this may sound like a familiar conversation, it is also no surprise because of the massive push to discuss "world building" as a means to write epic fantasy or sci-fi stories. But it feels like the concept of atmosphere and ecological emersion is less about world-building and more about finding a tool that is useful in creative writing, pushing setting from a static archetype to something more meaningful and tangible. In a world of virtual immersions and screen time, it is relevant to talk about stories that emphasize place and atmosphere. As we disconnect through technology, writers seem to be finding ways to reconnect in fiction. 

This concept also comes from significant and overwhelmingly profile landscapes from Tolkien, Herbert, and Martin. These epic sagas have created more than just setting to cast characters, but the setting themselves (Game of Thrones and Dune) become active and significant protagonists in terms of the stories and the development. Other worlds come from Star Wars, Star Trek, and other expandable settings that are being developed. What has also given rise to this kind of world building is the rise of the expanded TV series created and shaped by on-demand television binge watching. It has allowed cinema to move into a greater arc of storytelling and allow for expandable ideas through character and platform.  

Having said all that it is this sense of ecology and atmosphere that I've been hearing about more than "world building." To me, world building is based on the construction of things that aren't relatable at all to a common narrative. In fact, it is the burden of the world builder to create a bridge between the possible and the impossible. But to connect atmosphere and ecology to the concept of setting and atmosphere is less grandiose and more about pushing on a literary element that enhances the experience. It is writers like Jon Krakauer and Into Thin Air that connects the complete epic moment of gaining the summit of Everest and being so close to death, that it really doesn't matter. The balance between the world that is vastly different and the characters in it comes with vivid and compelling stories. In fact, I haven't written a fictional scuba diving piece because I struggle to connect the story with this uniquely remote and often isolating place. Nonfiction seems to show better in terms of writing about underwater, but without dialog, without grounding, this is a hard place to write for me. 

It is classic writing like Jack London, Melville, and Steinbeck that I think of these elements as being an important narrative quality. Cannery Row is not a whole new world, but there are moments that are stunning and vivid and so close to my own that it makes me awe. When Doc finds the dead girl in the rocks, it is a stunning literary element of the shore and what it can reveal. 

When and how do atmosphere and ecology evolve into a type of antagonist? In simple terms, does a war, or the sea (Moby Dick), or the jungle (Heart of Darkness) become an extension of the antagonist? Or can it be the antagonist alone? Or perhaps it was always the antagonist by design. How do these concepts arrive in stories and how does nature, while always described as an archetype, become more than a theme and plot construct and move into something more dominant in a novel, or in a selection of stories. 

"Setting" can be a backdrop, but with the discussions and workshop topics that cover world-building and ecology, it makes sense that perhaps "setting" is evolving from the backdrop of the production to a more significant and complicated element in creative writing. And in an emerging generation of writers and thinkers who have embraced "An Inconvenient Truth", recycling, and ecological preservation of the planet, it makes sense that atmosphere and environment would also mean more than fancy background curtains, but something that is coming, shaping their stories, and even acting out against their characters as a harbinger of change, conflict, and resolution of their dying world.  

Over a series of articles, I want to work out some of the setting-to-antagonist ideas that are out there and map them. It will be interesting to see where they go and why we should consider putting more value into them.

If you have any suggestions or connections and want to share, please feel free to post in the comment section. Feedback is always welcome.  


References
Bachelard, Gaston. The poetics of space. Vol. 330. Beacon Press, 1994.