A Very Short Story and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings (Book Review Sample)

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Comparing and contrasting Ernest Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” and Gabriel Garcia Marques’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
Human nature refers to the essential qualities shared by all humans (Encarta Dictionaries, 2010). Philosophy has often been concerned with identifying what contributes and drives human nature and determining whether human nature is good or evil? Ernest Hemingway once quoted that “a man can destroyed but never defeated” when referring to human nature. Francis Bacon, the celebrated English philosopher in his essay “Of Nature in Men” said this when referring to human nature: “A man’s nature runs either to herbs, or to weeds; therefore let him seasonably water the one or destroy the other”. The stories by Ernest Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” and Gabriel Garcia Marques’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” are both attention grabbing stories. The main characters in these two stories show similarities, at the same time, are also outstandingly different in the way they handle with their problems and life in general. 
The main characters will be scrutinized to note the commonalities and differences.  Although the characters are similar in some ways, it will be shown that their human nature is divergent, with the characters in the Marques story having a stronger nature. The central thesis of this paper will be compares and contrasts these two texts and focus on figurative language, diction, structure, themes, cultural and historical context. Further along this paper will attempt to bring out some similarities and differences in issues of the protagonist, the internal and external conflict, the point of view of the story, the situational ironies and the relevance that each of these story holds.
Ernest Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” is about a love affair between Italian nurse depicted by the character “Luz” and an ordinary soldier known only as “he” during a war. It cannot be ascertained beyond reasonable doubt which war it is but the two lovers separate after the war is over. The story has carefully choreographed scenes which are all related in building the plot. As stated by Griffith (1990:42), the plot of a fictional work is a pattern of carefully selected, casually related events that contains conflict. “A Very Short Story” begins with a stable state of affairs followed by a rise in actions. All which are casually related, followed by a climax in the plot after which the action begins to decline. Based on this sequence of events, the best method to analyze Ernest Hemingway’s work is by using the Frey tag’s Triangle as propounded by Gustar Freytag (1863). Freytag first used this method to analyze the structure of short stories and has since become a norm in critical stories when approaching short stories.
The stable situation is the story is that of a love affair between “Luz”, the nurse, and the ordinary soldier. From the opening paragraph of Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” it is evident that the lovers are spending time alone to nurture their growing feeling towards each other: “He and Luz could hear them below on the balcony”. The love affair is revealed where: “there were only a few patients, and they all knew about it”, this referring to the love affair. Further along the author sheds more light on the love affair when he writes; “before he went back to the front they went to the Duomo and prayed” and “They wanted to get married”. Both “he” and “Luz” were praying for his safe return from the war so that they can bring their dreams to fruition and spend the rest of their lives together. While the soldier is at war, the passion and love continues to flourish and Luz continually write him letters as it is understood: “They were all about the hospital, and how much she loved him and how it was impossible to get along and how terrible it was missing him at night”.
In the climax of the story is where the two lovers separate and go their individual ways. It begins at the point where the ordinary soldier is going back to America from Genoa and Luz, the nurse, is going back to Pordonone to open a hospital. The peak climax point is made clear from the scene where a battalion of arditi quartered in the town: “The major of the battalion made love to Luz, and she had never known Italians before, and finally wrote to the States that their affair had only been a boy and girl affair”. After this point begins the decline in the plot of the story and it clear that the love affair that the ordinary soldier and Luz clung on so dearly is over: “She loved him as always, but she realized now that it was only a boy and girl love. She hoped he would have a great career, and believed in him absolutely”. Luz has given up on the love affair and the hope of one day getting married as understood by: “Remember I was always true, remember that I always tried, remember I loved only you, remember me and smile. For it is better to forget than to remember me and cry”.
Gabriel Garcia Marques’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is about the experience of an angel with humans. It is a complex story about a familiar subject of human nature. The author goes to great length to reveal the human traits of jealousy, greed and even indifference. The plot of the story is somehow uncommon because Marques chooses not to have a lead role or a main character fore his plot. In some cases the man with enormous wings seems to be the focal point of the story but the author craftily ensures that his character is never truly revealed (the old man with enormous wings, who was found in a stormy night in the rear of Pelayo’s courtyard). Other characters include Elisenda, Paleyo, Father Gonzaga, a neighbor who claimed to know all about death and life, a woman turned into a spider, the whole neighborhood and other people who came to see the angel. The first paragraph begins with a description that sets the tone for rest of the story: “On the third day they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them in the sea, because the newborn had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench”.
As the plot develops we get to see the inhumane treatment that the angel receives in the hands of this community because of the ill conceived notion from the neighbor:    "He's an angel," "He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down." At some point in the story, “A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat”. At the lowest point during his stay with the humans, the angel “could scarcely eat and his antiquarian eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. All he had left were the bare cannulae of his last feathers”.
The first similarity in these stories is the cultural context and human nature. The human nature in both the stories inclines to a more evil that good cultural setting. As Marques points out as the angel leaves:" She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea." It must be unequivocally emphasized that notwithstanding all that the “man with enormous wings” had indirectly blessed her with (property, money, and security) Elisenda was lightened to see him leave. It may be human nature to be ungrateful, but in this statement the author tries to exemplify the theme of the story, that of unwillingness of the human mind to appreciate that which is before us. Although the propensity of having an angel is our presence is almost negligible we often never appreciate the good things that we have until it is too late.
Similarly the cultural context of the characters in “A Very Short Story” depicts a human nature that inclines towards evil as depicted by the two main characters “he” and Luz. In the opening paragraphs they fall in love during the war, they experience good things, and even plan their future together. Despite his unwavering love for Luz and his promises to her of a better future, the ordinary soldier does the opposite. At the closing stages of the story, it is glaringly learned that, “he contracted gonorrhea from a sales girl from a loop department store while riding in a taxicab through Lincoln Park.” In the case of Luz, she drastically changes her mind, and seems unenthusiastic about having a serious relation with him. The predicament of marriage is also another conflict; but this time it is man vs. society. It is apparent that they feel restricted without an official marriage certificate even if they love each other passionately.
Another similarity in Ernest Hemingway’s “A Very Short Story” and Gabriel Garcia Marques’s, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is that both these stories are written with dramatic or objective point of view. In this type of approach, “though the author is the narrator, he or she refuses to enter the minds of any of the characters. The author sees them and lets the reader form their own mental images as would in real life. This point of view is from time to ...