Imagery In A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

“His pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had” (Marquez 1). These are some words Marquez uses to describe the old man in his story, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. This is an example of a literary tool called imagery. Throughout the story, Marquez uses imagery to give the reader a better visual of the occurrences. Imagery allows the reader to not only have a better visual but to understand a story in a clearer form.
Imagery is basically, "a descriptive or figurative language" (Dictionary.reference.com). It is, “the formation of mental images, figures, or likenesses of things, or of such images collectively” (Dictionary.com). Imagery can explain many things for the readers to be

The main character in this selection just so happens to be an old man found in faulty condition who has enormous wings, which cause people to believe he is an angel. Marquez begins to describe the man by saying, "there were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth" (Marquez 1). Reading this and the quote in the previous paragraph, the reader would be able to have a detailed picture in mind if the old man being found and in what condition he might have been in. Perhaps the reader would visualize an old man who is bald and incapable of moving about. The author then goes on to tell what the man's founders thought of him when they first saw him. He states that they, "concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm" (Marquez

As a reader, sometimes you confuse all detail as imagery. The thing is that just by saying something along the lines of "Carolina had blue eyes", is not really imagery. Now yes, the reader will understand that Carolina has blue eyes but, had the sentence said, "Carolina had eyes as blue as a beautiful bright sky", then the reader would have gotten a clearer visual of Carolina's eyes. An example in Marquez's story is when he is introducing a " spider woman". "The woman turned into a spider for having disobeyed her parents" (Marquez 3). In this sentence, there is not enough detail for the reader to be able to get a clear picture in their mind of what the Spider Woman looks like. Another example of detail that is not considered imagery is in one source which stated that she was, “A freakshow attraction who visits the village” (SparkNotes: Character List). Although, if you continue reading the same paragraph of his story, Marquez writes that she, " was a frightful tarantula the size of a ram with the head of a maiden" (Marquez 3). Now at this point a better visual is given. The author even adds on to say, "what was most heartening, however, was not her outstandish shape but the sincere affliction with which she recounted the details of her misfortunes" (Marquez 3). Basically what is being said in that quote is that yes, her looks were sad but, what she went through was sadder. To me, it seems as though she was a