Aracataca, the coastal town where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was born, and Bogota, the inland city where he was educated (both located in Columbia), are synthesized in his writing. The two places represent broad differences in attitude, psyche, behavior, culture, and belief to Marquez. Bagota is the modern world: political, progressive, industrial, bleak, impersonal, and spiritless. Marquez once commented that Bogota was "a city without women" (Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Magic and Reality). Aracataca, on the other hand, is apolitical, reactionary, undeveloped, lush, close, and magical. In an interview with Peter H. Stone, Marquez said "that Caribbean reality resembles the wildest imagination" (162). Magical realism, Marquez's writing style, combining these seemingly dichotomous elements, directly resulted from his youthful experiences in these divergent environments.
Marquez was raised in Aracataca, by his grandparents, until the age of eight. It is during this period of his life that Marquez absorbs the magical elements that later influence his writing. His grandmother "was a great storyteller." He further describes his grandparents as "very superstitious and impressionable people," and their home as "a world of fantastic terrors" (Ma
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Marquez describes the angel as old and bald, a pitiful man having "buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked . A man is discovered in a village – with wings! However, the populace, even after determining that the man is an angel, continues to treat him with the fear and suspicion due a stranger. The truth of these reactions is thereby reduced, becoming magical. Pelayo is not thankful for the good fortune the angel brought to his life; instead, true to the form of the exploiter, he is irritated by the angel's presence in the chicken coop, once village interest has moved on. The magical and the realistic stand side by side, interacting with one another, causing the real to appear curiously fantastic, and the fantastic to appear oddly real. They react to the situations in life-like ways; however, these realistic reactions become bizarre when placed in the context of dealing with the appearance of an angel. Marquez became a journalist, an occupation he has continued throughout his life, which he says "has helped [his] fiction because it has kept [him] in a close relationship with reality" (Stone 162). This meshes the two worlds, blurring their distinctions, and allowing seamless transition between them. The magical nature of the angel is thus debased, and finally removed when people cease to pay to gawk, instead choosing to gawk at the latest attraction: a woman who had been turned into a spider (195).
In his "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," Marquez clearly utilizes the device of magical realism. Of partaking in a demonstration in Bogota, in 1948, Marquez says that "he became aware of the kind of country [he] was living in" (Stone 162). The line between the magical and the realistic is effectively blurred, raising questions about the correctness of everyday behavior on a spiritual level.
Approximate Word count =
958
Approximate Pages =
4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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