A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One of the most established authors of the 20th century was Gabriel Garcia Marquez. His works paved the way for other Latin American authors into the world of novels, something that had previously been a Western tradition. Throughout his life, Garcia Marquez travelled from his Colombian home of Aracataca to Mexico, Spain, Venezuela, Cuba, and many other countries all in the pursuit of his passion, which was writing (Echevarría). He pursued this passion from the early fifties all the way until his passing in 2014. In his works, he elegantly described many of the issues that were prevalent in his day, including the large repression of Columbians known as La Violencia, and also largely investigated the ideas of both alterity and magical realism,

He places magical concepts into otherwise completely realistic storylines, and as such convinces the reader that it could be true, and could maybe happen in their own lives. In fact, he argued in many interviews that he didn’t actually write “magical realism” because magic happens every day. He wanted to convey that even though everyday situations may seem monotonous and boring, there is always a spark of magic in it. This idea heavily played into the other approach of alterity in that it enables readers to view the “other” in a different way. Instead of seeing it as something they should distance themselves from and then judge from afar, Garcia Marquez suggests that they should view it as something good and to be

It’s a natural reaction to shy away from the unexplained and the out of the ordinary, as the characters did in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” What the author is trying to open the reader’s mind to is that not every single situation that falls under the category of “other” is something that must be treated with caution. Oftentimes there is a diamond in the rough behind the façade of “otherness” and people should push themselves to be willing to explore the situation in order to discover it. Additionally, the component of alterity is discussed in a way that breaks the mold of how people are taught to think about foreignness, in contrast to “otherness.” In Miriam Prieto’s article, “The Other from an Educational Perspective: Beyond Fear, Dependence,” she argues that the idea of diversity in and of itself is a mechanism used by groups of people in power to establish the differences between them and the “other.” She states that even when used in academia, the term diversity is used to further the idea that has driven the repression to “otherness” for ages (Prieto 299). The same concept is applicable to Garcia Marquez’s work because he ensures that his characters all immediately establish the