Magical Realism Mini Essay

Rosa Chavez Beltran

Honors ELA Pd.7
August 29, 2014
















Magical Realism in Literature
Magical realism is a surreal idea that was introduced on the 1940s. Magical
Realism is an aesthetic style or genre of fiction in which magical elements are present in
a realistic atmosphere in order to access a deeper understanding of reality. Magical
realism is a blend of two very different concepts that truly makes it unique and different.
Magical realism is present or shown in Gabriel Garcia-Marquezs short stories The
Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and The Handsomest Drowned Man in the
World.
In the short story, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, there are many
examples of magical realism. When they find the old man with enormous decrepit
wings they go to their neighbor and she says, Hes an angel He must have been
coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down (218).
This idea of an decrepit angel being found in the flesh shows magical realism because
Gabriel Garcia purposefully mentions a realistic place or a rainy setting but then they
mention an angel which has magical elements. Another example of magical realism is
shown in the same short story when Gabriel talks about other cases of people not being
fully human. One case talks about a young girl who, was a frightful tarantula the size of
a ram and with the head of a sad maiden (222). Magical realism is present in this
situation because no human can suddenly turn into a tarantula and still have a human
head.
In the short story, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World there are
very strange ideas that are being introduced which is a sign of magical realism. The text
states, There was so little land that mothers always went about with fear that the wind
would carry off their children (248). When the mothers worry about their children that is
something realistic but when the mothers exaggerate and think that their children will fly
away with the wind, thats magical realism. Another example of magical realism is when
the women try to impede the dead man's departure. When the women found the
drowned man, They secretly compared him to their own men, thinking that for all their
lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night (249). Maxgical
realism is present here because these ladies did not know him that well and they were
comparing this robust dead man to people who are alive.
The idea of magical realism is an idea that has many different thoughts
cummulated to create its actual defintion. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has put a touch of
magical realism into these stories by making magical and almost surreal things happen
in a real or reality based setting. Magical realism is when you have magical elements
present in a realistic atmosphere so that the both are blended. Magical realism is vividly
present in both A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings and The Handsomest
Drowned Man in the World.







Works Cited
Mrquez, abriel arca. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.Collected Stories. New
York: Harper & Row, 1984. 247-54. Print.
Mrquez, abriel arca. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. Collected Stories. New York:
Harper & Row, 1984. N. pag. Print.