Analysis of Showing Magical Realism in Different Stories - Research Paper Example

Full English Literature (Marjane Satrapi and Gabriel Garcia Marquez) 15 May ic and Modern) IntroductionLiterature, like music, has the power to make men happy. It expands their minds and raises their hopes and expectations, because with literature, their imagination is virtually with no limits. Anything is possible with literature, and is limited only by the creativity of writers. Literature is a hallmark of civilization, which can be traced back to five thousand years ago, in the very ancient civilization of Sumeria with the first ever written surviving literary Epic of Gilgamesh, from which many portions of the Old Testament had been taken from. In the same manner, literature works like magic, because a good writer engages his or her readers and lets them forget for a while their own problems, and get so absorbed with the story and characters. Like magic, literature can suspend disbelief and makes anything possible. A good writer also can impart lifelong lessons into the story, like the very famous Aesop's fables. Literature has many forms, called as genre. Among these are fiction, fairy tales, short stories, full-length crime novels, poetry, non-fiction, and autobiographies, to name just a few. Some genres can fade away from popular culture, while other genres gain traction and be the favorite of readers for quite a period of time, creating a new trend in literary writing. However there are also some literary forms which stand the test of time, and become literary classics. A few of these literary works stand out among the rest, and persist throughout many generations. Good writers employ a variety of literary devices to enhance their story telling; one of these is the trope, which is figurative language used to amplify the theme of a story and trigger in the readers a heightened realism, in which even magical circumstances and situations can acquire a realistic sense of these having actually happened; in other words, to suspend disbelief. Discussion There are also several sub-genres within a certain literary genre. In the case of fiction there is fantasy literature, in which pure fantasy of myths and legends are mixed with themes of a fictional story to create a compelling motif. An example are children's stories, of which a big portion of them are made up of fantasy, with characters totally made up by the creative imagination of the writer. Despite being fantasy literature, these stories have a high believable quality in them, because these stories employ a technique known as magical realism. Magical realism can be considered as an oxymoron, which is a contradictory term, as it denotes two contrasting characteristics within a literary technique. The first perspective is a use of magic to portray dreamlike magical features, characters, and story lines while a second perspective depicts these same features, characters and themes as wholly logical and rational. These two contrasting perspectives overlay each other, creating a sensible story and forming an everyday reality that blends perfectly and seamlessly into realistic fiction. The chief attraction of magical realism for its growing fan base of readers is the use of imaginary story lines, characters, and events which create a credible and realistic story. It is this highly-creative mixing of imaginary and fantastic elements with its amazing ability to let readers suspend their disbelief, because although they knew certain characters and events are mere fantasy creations, the way these are used as part of matter-of-fact everyday life make the entire story a very compelling read for adherents and a test of the writing ability of an author. Readers know it is a fantasy and yet it is wholly acceptable to them, they are willing to accept the writer's premise without too much questions in order for the story to go forward. The writer is therefore given free rein to his creative abilities to make up stories which are in a sense both magical and realistic. This paper looks at two such magical realism stories by two world famous authors, depicting fantasy characters and events in a very realistic manner. The first magical realism (MR) story is entitled “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” written by famed Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez (born 1927, now is aged 86 years old). His other more famous works are the novels “Love in the Time of Cholera” and “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and he is affectionately known by his nickname of Gabo. In 1982, he won the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature and attained critical acclaim as well as commercial success for popularizing magic realism as a specific sub-genre in fiction. He has followed the writing style of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in using magical realism. In the story, the main character named Pelayo was busy cleaning and clearing his old house of dead crabs brought in from the sea by a storm. It was already the third day of heavy rains, and still the sky was overcast and so light was dim even at noon time. Suddenly, he saw an old man stuck face down in the muddy backyard of his house, and could hardly get up due to his heavy wings. It was an incredible sight indeed, and he got so frightened he called out to his wife Elisenda so they could both examine this strange living specimen of a human being. After recovering from initial shock, the couple decided to let the old man with very big wings to stay with the chickens in their coop. Soon, their neighbors heard of this strange creature and came in droves to ogle at this odd-looking specimen, whom some of them dared to suggest was a fallen angel, out to get the sick child and bring him to heaven but instead got blown wayward by the winds and knocked down to earth by the heavy storm rains. This wonderful short story is told from the perspective of a fully rational adult person who sees nothing wrong or odd about seeing an old man with big wings, as if such a specimen is perfectly normal and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. This is the essence of this genre of magic realism; the extraordinary and the supernatural is accepted as everyday reality. This is a surreal quality of the story, exemplified by the priest who went to examine a flesh-and-blood real angel as if it is perfectly all right to do so, even writing to his superior for an advice. Later in the story, a doctor also got to examine the old man. He had come to see the child of the couple Pelayo and Elisenda who got sick with chicken pox, and being a doctor, he could not resist the temptation to perform a physical inspection of the old man. He listened to sounds of his heart and kidneys, and came away with the conclusion he is not normal but still managed to stay alive. From the perspective of the doctor, the old man with big wings is truly an anomalous creature. A doctor is trained in science, specifically in biology and physiology, and yet examined this old man as if it is the right thing to do, without any trace of incredulity. This is magic realism, the extraordinary and supernatural becomes ordinary or commonplace. So in this story, the perspective is that of an adult couple who had a chance to really see the old man up close and yet not find it odd. This is reinforced by a priest who also saw an old man with wings but did not offer any credible objections as to how such a creature came into being in the first place. Being a priest and a man of faith and logic, he did not find it a shock or absurd to see such a man but thought it is wiser to write to his bishop, whom he had hoped would write to the archbishop, and finally, maybe reach the pope himself. The realism of the story is further reinforced by the visit of the doctor, who upon his closer examination of the old man, even wondered how natural it was for him to have wings. It took a man of science, like the doctor, to see the old man as a natural human organism and in all honesty, instead ask why other men do not have wings like him. The magic was when it was time for the old man to fly away and never return (Davis, Harrison, & Johnson 68). This story can be contrasted with the second story, “Persepolis” by the female Iranian writer Marjane Satrapi. It is partly autobiographical but largely fictional. In her story, an entire narrative of transformation from childhood to adulthood in Iran is told from the perspective of a child and later as a teenager, but with the realism of an adult. This is the reverse of the “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Marquez; a young child with the mind of an adult. There are several instances in “Persepolis” where magic was employed by the writer. These were during the early years of the main character Marji, when she was barely six years old, and she declared herself to be ready to become a martyr and a prophet so she could try to correct the injustices she saw in her country of Iran during the start of the Islamic Revolution. It is sheer magic for the reader to realize how a child so young could also be so precocious; it defies the imagination how she could be still reading comic books but at the same time find it appropriate to discuss heavy intellectual materials like dialectic materialism and read works on socialism and revolution by Descartes, Marx, Trotsky, Lenin, Castro, and Che Guevara. Another example of this magical perspective of a child but with the thinking and the mind of an adult is when teenager Marji meets her childhood friend Kia again after a long absence of several years. Kia is now a war veteran and crippled, an amputee during the war against Iraq. He told her a story about a veteran who got married, but his wife just soon after divorced him after realizing his “manly thing” is not in its original place but located somewhere on his hip. The realism in the story were the many different horrible experiences told by the survivors of torture by agents of the deposed Shah, and then again, repeated by the new regime of the Ayatollah Khomeini when opponents and dissidents were also tortured or killed. Marji told her life story matter-of-factly but with a hint of unreality or magic in it. Conclusion Magical realism is a unique way to tell a story, as opposed to the realism of earlier centuries. “Persepolis” showed how cultural changes brought about by political upheaval can be upsetting and seem magical to a child but who is realistic enough to know her childhood is gone forever (Satrapi 25) while “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” showed how it is a completely logical narrative wherein reality and magic are interwoven seamlessly into a very credible and compelling story, acceptable to adults but told from the perspective of a child. Works Cited Davis, Paul, Harrison, Gary, and David M. Johnson. The Bedford Anthology of World Literature: The Twentieth Century, 1900 – to the present. Boston, MA, USA: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. Print. Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood/The Story of a Return. New York, NY, USA: Random House Incorporated, 2005. Print. Read More