Magical Realism vs. 3rd Person Omniscient

Third person omniscient and third person with magical realism tend to diverge in the ways that authors use them. Magical realism allows the reader to speculate about aspects of the story that aren’t specified by the author, while an omniscient point of view is restrictive, drawing the reader’s focus to specific aspects of the story, allowing little room for speculation. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” makes the free-form nature of magical realism apparent in the multiple ways to interpret the old man’s presence, while in “A Good Man is Hard to Find”; the more realistic omniscient point of view gives definitive descriptions of almost everything allowing little room for creative thought. In “|A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, very little is presented to you in terms of clarification. You are left with an old man with large wings and a rather superstitious body of townsfolk. Then you see the townsfolk, especially Pelayo and Elisenda, reacting to the presence of this foreign object. Though you are given a grand scope of things with phrases like, “[t]he world had been sad since Tuesday” (285), and “[t]he curious came from far away” (288), you allowed to freely interpret these events as they unfold your eyes. They can also allow you to speculate about topics that aren’t specified within the story, such as, why is this winged man here? What purpose does he serve? Even though you get to look over a broad scope you are given the same information, or lack there of, that the townspeople are getting. None of the information you are provided with in absolute though. For instance you are given the opinion of “a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death”, who says that it is some sort of fallen angel. Although the townspeople accept this information and start calling it an angel, you the author are not restricted to this. Since the source isn’t absolute, the old man can be virtually anything to you. Since you are free to speculate, he is only an