The Old MAn With Enormous Wings
Gabriel Garcia Marquez manages to bring a story to life that has magic, sadness, mystery, greed, enchantment, religion, and wonder all in just a few pages. The main character is the very old man with enormous wings. At no time in the story is he even cared enough about to be given a name. The father of a sick child stumbles upon this man with wings lying face down in the mud during a rainy night unable to get up unsure if he is even alive. “He had to go very close to see that it was and old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings” (Marquez, 2004, 323). In the beginning he even went and asks the neighbor woman who know everything about life and death to take a look at the man they had found and she tells him he is an angel yet he ignores her words. “He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down” (Marquez, 324). The ignorance of the adults in this story is horrific. Here is an angel right before there eyes sent to save there child’s life or possible take it to heaven if one wanted to look at it that
The setting of the story remains depressing even as the child begins his journey to school. “When the child began school it had been some time since the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray man. They would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen” (Marquez, 2004, 326). Even when he survived the worst winter and was beginning to recover there was still a sense of melancholy to the story. The setting at the end of the story was what put the final touch to the real sense of sadness and dreariness when the angel begin to fly away and Elisenda was happy that he was leaving because he was no longer an annoyance in her life. The narrator of A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is Pelayo. The voice of Pelayo in telling this story was not one of education or even good judgment most of the times. He made the right choice by helping the angel up and then going to get the wise woman of the village for her opinion about who he was and why he was there. However, he did not listen to her or it could be he did listen and was so overcome with fear that this angel was at his house to take his dying son that he was in denial. Pelayo debated on killing the angel “Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen armed with his bailiff’s club” (Marquez, 2004, 324). way. Either way, for whatever reason it was stopped by the storm and made into a circus animal for entrainment purposes. The irony of it all is what the angel did bring to the family. It is hard to think of him as coming to take the child’s life because he brought so much good to the child. Pelayo and Elisenda started charging people to “view” him after they put him in the chicken coop. This made them rich. After he was no longer a circus act the family did not pay him any attention. H
Some topics in this essay:
Wings Pelayo,
American Village,
Garcia Marquez,
Pelayo Elisenda,
Tale Children,
enormous wings,
marquez 2004,
chicken coop,
Enormous Wings,
marquez 2004 326,
2004 326,
angels” marquez,
throughout story,
child’s life,
kept watching,
annoyance life,
neighbor woman,
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Approximate Word count = 1278
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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