A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Throughout all of recorded history, humanity has an unquenchable desire to understand the world and what governs it, thus the laws of science were developed to provide an explanation for these phenomena. Prior to their establishment, however, man turned his ideas to the belief in all-powerful beings that controlled the world. As faith in the divine increased, many self-righteous leaders sought to influence this belief for personal gain, thereby corrupting this righteous ideology. These groups are often cultists and/or radicalists, zealous in promoting slander and hate in their twisted form of divinity. As though a crude imitation of true religious practices. In his story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” Gabriel Garcia Marquez exploits the
Described as having “...only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth…[with]...huge buzzard wings, dirty and half plucked…” (371), the angel lacks all the grandeur that one commonly associates with divinity. Nor does he act as an angel, “haughty...scarcely deigned to look at mortals…” (374) in addition to the fact that he cannot reliably conjure miracles, as “...the few miracles attributed to [him] showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who...grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who...almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers” (374). This mocking would be more often attributed to demons than an angel, yet the townspeople still blindly accept him as genuine. He is even susceptible to sickness as he “...came down with chickenpox…” (375). As angels are ethereal, they are assumed to be unaffected by terrestrial elements and illnesses, yet the angel caught a human disease, contradicting what is to be assumed. In spite of these very notable contradictions, none of the townspeople ever believe he is anything but authentic. He looks like an angel therefore he is an angel. This sort of blind devotion is concurrent with many religious devotees, never questioning their faith or accepting alternatives to what they assume to know. The world, like the angel, is how they perceive it to be, and very little can change
As part of humanities consistent need to exploitation of others for personal gain, the angel was held captive for years while the townspeople pulled, prodded, and made money off of him. In the town’s religion of Catholicism, when angels are introduced, they are revered and praised, often sought for wisdom or advice. However here, the old man is a prisoner condemned to repeated maltreatments such as being “...befuddled by hellish heat...” (373) having “...cripples [pull] out feathers to touch to their defective parts, and ...the most merciful threw stones at him...” (373) or being “...burned...with an iron for branding steers…” (373). This represents humanity's ever present use of religion to justify their actions, destroying its ideals in the process. They pull and harass it hoping to get something from it, yet when the angel did not provide the correct miracle or a miracle at all, they abandoned their faith and interest in him in favor of a more responsive attraction. This action is equivalent to how man converts to seemingly more rewarding religions when their own does not grant their