Marquez

The text “a Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” personally affected me greatly. I believe there are great themes that go along with this short story. The one that personally touched me was that life itself is a miracle. I feel that is something we often forget in the everyday hustle and bustle of life. We think of all the things we don’t have or what we have lost and never remember what we do have. For example people often think about all of the times they were hurt by friends and never remember the true friends that were by their side during an important moment. I think as a society we often think about what we don’t have, not what we do. We often forget that life itself is a true miracle. The connection between the two stories is perception. People often lock themselves into beliefs and will not astray from their own views. Marquez as a writer wants you to step out of your convert zone as a reader and see what is in front of you as it truly is. I think this often happens when people first meet one another or see someone for the first time. It follows the old saying “don’t judge a book by its cover.” I think this is important because you never know what someone is truly going through or what kind of day they are having. You must open up and see what is truly in front of you. Neither story, “a Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” nor “the Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, clashed with my view of the world. I think the stories are a portrayal of life today. Although they were written at different times they still portray people and how they act in today’s society. For example, in “the Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, the drowned man is a burden to the men but the desire of the women. To the women he is the ideal lover, husband, and son. We learned this story was published in Play Boy magazine and basically criticizing what the magazine is all about. The women felt the man was better than what they had, without really knowing. In today’s world I feel that people often think something is always greener on the other side or that there is always some better out there for them. I very much enjoyed the two texts written by Gabriel Marquez. I thought they were very interesting and different from the previous stories written by Cortazar. The magical realism in this story is different and more suttel in these stories. It tricks you and changes your state of mind. I very much enjoyed it!