Comparing Márquez's A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

“When I left that icy prison I’d no idea where north and south were but I did have two very strong convictions. One was that good novels must be a poetic transposition of reality, and the other was that mankind’s immediate future lay in socialism” (qtd. in Bloom 11). This is the essence of Gárcia Márquez. A man of hard principles and passionate imagination, he was born on March 6, 1928 in Aracataca, Columbia. His childhood years were marked by his relationships with his grandparents and his exposure to Latin American folk lore. As he grew older, his parents forced him to move to Bogatá and attend boarding school. Later, he studied law. However, Gárcia always dreamed of pursuing writing. Considering the state of Columbia during that time, it …show more content…
In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, the old man quickly turns from a spectacle into an unexciting nuisance. Although the villagers had tried to turn him into a carnival act, the old man remained above frivolities and fame. This idea is central to the theme of the story which was to show that the irrational is a natural part of life and must be accepted on its own terms (Slomski 4263). Dignity is again an important characteristic of the Colonel in No One Writes to the Colonel. The Colonel wants to preserve his family’s honor and does not want to sell his treasured items even despite his lack of food. His image is more important (Forero). When his wife goes against his wishes he remarks, “So now everybody knows that we are starving” (Colonel 41). Márquez was writing from firsthand experience as he struggled with destitution until his writing …show more content…
The trend continued as Gárcia struggled as an aspiring journalist. At one point, he lived in a brothel with prostitutes who treated him as family. When he could not afford his room, he used his developing novel, Leaf Storm, as an “I Owe You” (17). Despite his modest means, Márquez had dignity and found work at whatever journal or newspaper he was able to. In 1965, he had an epiphany and locked himself away in a tiny room for eighteen months to write his most famous novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude. Because his family had no income at the time, his wife was forced to pawn items in their house just like the wife from No One Writes to the Colonel. (26-27). Everything changed when he finally found success from One Hundred Years of Solitude. Despite winning the Nobel Peace Prize and becoming famous, he always maintained an air of secrecy that translated into his writing style of