Examples Of Magical Realism In A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Adding an unwanted spin to something magical is Gabriel Garcia Marquez specialty. He demonstrates magical realism in both, “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” and “Eyes of a Blue Dog.” He demonstrates this rhetorical device by explaining that Latin America is full of cruelty, desire, as well as loneliness and isolation. Magical realism in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” is the truth of how cruel people are to an angel of the lord. The angel didn’t look how the people thought an angel should look, he was too human and didn’t speak the language of God so they treated him like a circus animal. “The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding.” Although the angel is magnanimous, these people shouldn’t be burning and judging an angel, they should be worshiping him. The magical realism in this short story, is how an angel came to earth, but he was treated with cruelty instead of veneration.

In "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" the angel can’t fly, impeding him from returning home. “Some large stiff feathers began to grow on his wings… But he must have known the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them.” Once he grows his feathers, he is able to fly away, which the angel and his keepers have desired for a long time. In "Eyes of a Blue Dog," both the man and the woman desired to see each other outside of their dreams. The man never remembers anything about the woman, but the woman searches high and low for the man. “And she opened her purse and on the tiles with her crimson lipstick, she wrote in red letters: 'Eyes of a blue dog.'” The woman will right eyes of a blue dog all over the city she lives in, just so she can find the man she dreams of. The angel and the man and woman desire for opposing reasons wanting to leave something, and wanting to find