[World Lit.]5th Reading Journal: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World & A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

           

              Two short stories written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” and “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” both bear qualities of magic realism, in which magical elements are permeated into reality as though normal. The “handsomest” drowned man himself is magic to the small village in the first story, and so is the old man with “enormous” wings in the latter. In each story, people’s attitude towards the magic runs counter to one another: whereas the drowned man is extolled by the villagers, the old man with wings gets ostracized soon. On the surface, it may seem like the attitudes of people towards magic in the stories differ from each other, but frankly they are representing and satirizing the same quality of human beings: how people tend to follow the ostensible aspects of the world, and how easily they get influenced by those factors.

        

             In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” Marquez mockingly portrays the process in which people in the village eulogize the dead body just by looking at his external features. As soon as the women see the body, they all agree that he must have been a guy called Esteban. They feel satisfied to know that he does not belong to any other villages, and sigh, “Praise the Lord. He’s ours!” Even the men, who at first think “the fuss was only womanish frivolity,” recognize that “it is not necessary to repeat” that “he was Esteban,” when the dead man’s face is revealed under the handkerchief. After the holy funeral of the man, in which the women linger over trivial decoration because they don’t want to let go of him, the villagers know that “everything will be different from then on” because they will make Esteban’s memorial spread anywhere. 

Most of the analysis that I could find online argue that this story shows how the village gets “inspired” and “positively influenced” by the existence of Esteban. But, I completely disagree with this cliché explanation. I doubt that Marquez tried to depict that Esteban, the magically enormous dead body, had a positive impact on people. Rather, I contend that the whole story was a satirical mockery of people’s pursuit of ostensible values in life. That the villagers begin to praise the drowned body for its physical qualities (plus their mythical belief and imagination purposefully projected on him) shows how they only value external aspects; that they claim their lives’ being changed after meeting Esteban portrays how easily people can get affected and change their overall perspective on life.

On the similar road, Marquez further criticizes the pretentious lives of people in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” through the depiction of their changing minds depending on the ostensible qualities of matter. At first the townspeople including Pelayo and Elisenda pay much attention to the so-called angel, for he has interesting physical features and is said to cure people suffering with strange diseases. By selling the tickets for meeting the old man, Pelayo and Elisenda earn a lot of money. Consequently, the old man with wings becomes nothing more than an animal in a circus show. People soon pay much more attention to a “frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden” because she has more interesting stories to tell and responses better. They treat the old man and the spider woman not as other human beings, but as different kinds of entertainment; they are not interested in what kind of "people" the man and the woman are, but how much they can get them interested. That the townspeople change their interest with so much frivolity, depending only on the external features shows people’s capricious beliefs and how they lack the ability to look at people beyond the outlook. 

Even Father Gonzaga and the Catholic Church are only focusing on whether the old man can speak Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Despite the common expectations on church to be leading ordinary people to a higher place in terms of mental complication, the church described in the story is only pursuing superficiality. Like the portrayal of Catholic Church in “Araby” by James Joyce, church in the story only maintains empty formalities and vanity. It not only seeks those pretentious values, but also greatly influences people with its absolute power of religion. Marquez mocks the reality of church in his times, which only bore conservative authority rather than practical aids.

Throughout both stories of magic realism, Marquez tries to deride people’s behavior in which they don’t understand the greater significance of life, but just stay with myopic vision of the world, following what they can get through their senses and getting strong influences from superficial aspects of life. 

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