My Take On Máquez

            Unlike Cortázar, Máquez doesn't play with time, with perspective or with your mind in his writing. He rather proposes a different reality from our own. In both "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" and "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World", Máquez brings different people to our world; different in the way that they don't live up to the people's expectations in the story. As the angel in "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is ugly, old and doesn't speak Latin like an should, and the drowned man in "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" doesn't have the expected expression on his face that a drowned man is supposed to have.

            This aspect of his writing reminds me of when I first met one of my best friends. She thought I looked preppy and popular and, therefore, thought I would be a mean girl. After having made this assumption she already had her mind made up that she didn't like me. Eventually, she found that I didn't live up to her expectations obviously since she's my best friend now. But this is in sorts what happened to the angel and the drowned man. Their appearances determined the way they were viewed by society. Since the drowned man was handsome he was buried like family and even pitied based on a life that the society made up for him (like the whole doorways being too small and everyone calling him names in his own society), even though he was really just a strange man that washed up on the beach. On the same token because the angel was old and ugly he was treated poorly (like being branded). Máquez is very critical of society in his writing with how society treats people that it feels are different. In the end, I think he makes crucial and true observations about human society.