Blog Post 1: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings// Gabriel Garcia Marquez

ENH

Professor Menon  

March 05, 2019

Blog Post One

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings and The Hunger Artist are two different short stories, but each main character of the stories share common characteristic. They represent the cultural values of their respective fictional societies.  One story is a much more community-oriented look at sacrifice and human connection for the benefit of others, while the other one is a look into an individual’s self-motivated struggle.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez embeds magical surrealism with belonging and identity within a rural community in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children. The fallen angel interrupts life in an unnamed Latin American community influenced by village magic, colonial Catholicism, and human determination. The angel’s huge buzzard wings, dirty with parasites. Between man and the supernatural, thereby obscuring his true corporeal belonging. The angel’s disabled body discourages autonomy while inside the village; therefore, the angel passively allows the community to assume agency over his body and identity. Without resistance on the part of the angel, he allows the village isolates and displays him as a circus freak for tourists seeking miracles. The old man therefore is a reflective story on a decisive community at large rather than a centralized chronicle of the individual.

The Hunger Artist, in his hay day, was a spectacle many people enjoyed watching. He fasted in a cage for forty days and was seen by different people. Kids and adults flocked because of amusement and curiosity. But the popularity of the Hunger Artist did not last. He grew old. The only thing he knew how to do was to fast. So he signed up with a circus. But this new generation was different. No one understood. No one took notice or had an appreciation. He was now just a mere obstacle on the way to the menagerie, the spectacle was gone.

Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist likewise approaches surrealist isolated identity against a specific culture. In the short story, an artist starves and locks himself alone in a cage as a public attraction for a privileged European society. Kafka’s short story comparatively follows the individual of the hunger artist; unlike the old man, the community becomes the background rather than the main part of the fiction. The hunger artist is his own circus freak without a true political or artistic purpose; he continues his exploitative performance because he is never satisfied with attention or profit. Marquez's angel, however, acts to have little choice; without self-interest, he relies on the community to use his body. These distinctions in motivation and emphasis on others indicate A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings is more community oriented, whereas A Hunger Artist is about the individual.

In conclusion, the characterizations and circumstances of the exploited protagonists and foil characters in both A Hunger Artist and A very Old Man With Enormous Wings artfully represent the cultural values of their respective fictional societies. Although each works approaches captivity and belonging, the actions and motivations of the male protagonists dictate vastly different interpretations for readers. In “A Hunger Artist,” the exploitative indulgence of both the hunger artist and his audience reflect the European Modernist structure of individual emotion and exploration in which Kafka writes. Marquez would have been conscious of the highly concentrated focus on Kafka’s isolated individual, as Kafka’s work influenced Marquez's early short fiction.
Valerie Rubio

Blog Post One

The short stories AVery Old Man With Enormous Wings,A Hunger Artist, and Sonny’s Blues all share many things in common. They may not be the same setting, have the same characters, nor are in the same time period but, the lead characters all share something in common. The struggles they go through throughout the short story and what they have to deal with between the three stories can all come hand and hand. The three main characters all face society and all of its expectations in their lifestyles.            

The first story is, A Hunger Artist written by Franz Kafka, The story is placed in central Europe in the 1920’s. It's about a man who goes by the hunger artist, his job is pretty much as it sounds. He is presented to a crowd in town inside of a cage, the town just watches him. The towns people get some sort of evil pleasure in watching the hunger artist starve himself and become weaker and weaker everyday. He becomes very miserable, and frustrated to the point of him finally quitting and joining the circus, not long after the man passes away and gets replaced immediately. Everyone enjoyed watching him fail, and people were always watching him.

The next story is  A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This short story is about a man who is an angel. Although he isn't your stereotyped angel, he was an older man, not very handsome, and most of all he couldn't fly. His society always judged him in a sense because he wasn't what an angel was supposed to look like at all. He lived his whole life with shame and disgrace that he could ever mound to what he was supposed to be in life. Until one day,
he overcame what nobody expected him to. He started flying high in the sky proving everyone wrong, as he flew off into the horizon he left everyone in shock and awe. Although the old man didn't go through the best life, he still accomplished his one main goal in life, which was to spread his wings and fly.
one way or another.

Lastly, the short story Sonny’s Blues written by James Baldwin. This story was taken is post civil war America, about a boy named Sonny and his brother whom is the narrator of this story. The brother Sonny was a musician who had a drug addiction, this problem affected his music and his ability to perform. His older brother and him always butted heads over his drug abuse, because Sonny would try and justify as to why he did what he did. Finally Sonny and his brother talked it out after a long time of arguing and he agrees to go and watch Sonny perform. He did and it was like he was his old self again, Sonny finally overcame his obstacles and got his talent back.

As you can see all three of these short stories aren't the same but the main characters all go through the same dilemmas in their life. The are all watched whether it was to see if the artist were to eat, the angel could fly, or Sonny could finally perform again. They were all watched heavily by society and judged by everything they did. Theses stories are good examples of man vs society and how some of them can overcome all of pressure that comes with being the center of attention in

Audry Salazar