A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

I have recently read Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story entitled A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. I enjoyed the story more than I have enjoyed any other story that I have read recently, and I felt that I should wonder why this was so. After I finished reading the story, I thought that it wasn't so much the plot of the story itself that I was drawn to, it was mostly Garcia Marquez's way of telling it. When the topic of why people are drawn to certain pieces of literature is discussed, the idea that is most always brought up is psychological projection, where the reader becomes involved and invested in the plot of a story because they are experiencing the plot themselves as one of the characters. A part of projection that seems obvious is that people are especially drawn to works because they relate to aspects of it, such as finding similarities between themselves a character, or between the setting of the work and a place they are familiar with and associates certain feelings or memories with. Or, the reader aspires to have traits that one of the characters possesses. However, it seems to be that what is discussed less about projection is even more important but less clear, which is why a reader is drawn to a specific style of story telling. This can go into certain genres of literature, for example, someone's favorite works may be all southern gothic works, which might be because that person is drawn to the kinds of characters that are common in southern gothic, usually flawed and in a flawed environment, for the reasons previously described. However, one may find that when taking into account his or her favorite works, they may all be entirely different genres, but may have very similar styles of narration.
Films are similarly constructed and brought to life with not words but lighting, costume design, and all of the other things that are created with words in literature but physically created in film. Jean Pierre Jeunet's film Delicatessen is visually constructed similarly to the imagery of Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. The broadest comparison that can be made between the two is that the settings of the two are somewhat of microcosms. Delicatessen takes place in a radius of one block at the most, most of the movie taking place in the apartment that the main character is a new tenant in. One line that sets the fact that A Very Old Man With Wings is a fantasy story is "the world had been sad since Tuesday." Around this line are other sentences that establish the world as nothing more than the home of the married couple where the angel falls, and maybe the town that it is in as well, although that is only referred to a couple of times and the story takes place mostly in the couple's courtyard. The effect that one particular setting is in fact the only thing in a representation of the world in a story, and that there is nothing beyond that. There is also the tone set towards the angel that establishes him as almost part of a dream, and since he is the main focus of the story, the whole thing may very well be a dream. For example, the husband finds the angel and then "frightened by this nightmare, [he] ran to get Elisenda, his wife..." The main thing that seems to make Delicatessen seem so dreamlike, or rather nightmare-like, is the use of color and lighting. Like Amelie, another film of Jean Pierre Jeunet, color is used to create different moods, but mostly to create the overall "glow" of the film, in Delicatessen it emphasizes the crowdedness of the apartment building and creates the feeling of a kind of post apocalyptic frenzy for resources. There is also the fact that both works focus on fantastical characters and subjects. In A Very Old Man With Wings, the angel is the main focus, and there is also girl who was turned into a tarantula the size of a person with her head still intact, who takes the attention away from the crowds that originally came to the couple's house to see the angel, which can be interpreted as irony and symbolism, and in Delicatessen the premise is a butcher/landlord that occasionally butchers his tenants and sells them as meat to his remaining tenants in a place and time where grain is currency. We also don't ever meet any other characters outside of the apartments other than the people who live underground and eat grain rather than use it as currency, as well as the main character the magician and the butcher's daughter who can be viewed, like the angel, as set apart from the ignorance and anonymity of the other characters.