Comparison and Evaluation of Like Water for Chocolate and a Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Like Water for Chocolate and a Very Old Man with Enormous Wings are both stories that include elements of magical realism. In both the stories there is a smooth transition between the realistic and magical parts of the stories. Both authors use sensory details to give a vivid image. For example In a very old man with enormous wings Gabriel Garcia Marquez describes the old mans wings as, His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked were forever entangled in the mud(1). Instead of just saying that his wings were entangled in the mud. Laura Esquivel uses this type of language when she describes how shower caught on fire when Gertrudis went in. Laura Esquivel uses similes to further describe what she writes and give the reader a better image. For example, "She could pick up the watermelon and give it a single blow against a stone, in a particular stop, and like magic the watermelon rind would open like the petals of a flower leaving the heart intact on the table (97). Marquez uses a simile to describe how the old man dragged himself about, The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man (2). The punctuation in each of the stories helps bring across the mood of the narrator and/or the characters. For example in Like Water for Chocolate when Chencha expresses her anger at the way Mama Elena spoke of marriage an exclamation point is added to show that. If the exclamation point was not added the mood would have been different. In Marquezs story he does not use any punctuation marks other that periods. Both the authors sentence lengths vary. The characters, settings, and flashbacks help to build the story. The characters add the conflict and substance, the settings give that stories a backdrop and a base for all the conflict to take place, and the flashbacks help give move detail to previously mentioned details. The diction in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is formal. In Like Water for Chocolate the diction is a mix of formal and informal diction. The two stories do not have much in common but their magical realism is very similar.