In the following excerpt, Gerlach examines "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" as a fantasy in which Garcia Marquez employs language, similes, and satire to both destroy and evoke an appropriate reaction to a mythic subject. Gerlach also offers his interpretation of the role of the narrator, asserting that the narrator uses two levels of distortion to contrast the human folly of the villagers with the more desirable traits (such as patience) of the old man

Is fantasy dependent on certain themes, and, if so, might these themes be exhausted? My own response to one story, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," a story in which theme and the atmosphere of a fantasy that emerges from the theme are, if anything, negatively correlated, leads me to suspect that fantasy is not closely tied to theme, so that fantasies may be created in...