“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” June 24, 2008
Posted by eng161 in Common Room.Tags: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, irony, narrator, symbolism, tone, voice
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One of the hallmarks of Marquez’s writing style is the tone of the narrator’s voice. Every story we read is told by a narrator that chooses a perspective (first person versus third person [limited or omniscient]). In this case, the narrator chooses third person omniscient. But, the striking thing is the very deadpan nature of the narrator’s voice in Marquez’s stories. His narrator’s are almost always very emotionally detached. The magical and fantastic is described alongside the very real and mundane with the exact same tone and conviction. Nothing about the narrator’s description hints at the extraordinary nature of some of the details.
This is one form of irony that we need to explore to figure out what Marquez is trying to get us to understand. Pick a passage consisting of no more than a few sentences (3 to 5) where the narrator describes both simple daily life in the village and something that seems really extraordinary. By juxtaposing these ideas, what does Marquez want us to understand about the situation, the characters, or even the way we understand the world?
Monkeys! What do they mean? June 17, 2008
Posted by eng161 in Common Room.5 comments
In “Interpreter of Maladies”, the monkeys are central to understanding important details in one of the main conflicts between Mr. Kapasi and the Das family. Read the footnote concerning what the locals call these monkeys and look at the ways in which the Das family react to this bit of information and the monkeys in general. What is symbolized by the final moment when the monkeys surround Bobby?
There is no specific right or wrong answer here. In fact, several different ideas are embedded in the moment.
