Antigone
Vivienne Cortes
Professor Wisentower
COMT 101
17 March 2014
Judgment Based on Perception: Society As A Whole
In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (The Norton Introduction to Literature, Portable 11th Edition, Kelly J. Mays) Gabriel Garcia Marquez includes many theories of what this thing is in Pelayo and Elisendas’ backyard. Pelayo and Elisendas formed their perception based on what they heard. “They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailors voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm”(354). Pelayo and Elisendas made their decision using their hearing to come to a conclusion. Judgment based on perception; the man is a lonely castaway. My theory, Society as whole judges everything based on our own perception. Most of us make judgments’ not based on facts, but simply, perception.
There are many factors to perception, our senses are key to our perception “they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake. “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””(354). Her decision was based on her visual perception. Judgment based on perception; the man is an angel.
The parish priest Father Gonzaga based his decision on his idea of what being Godly meant to him. It is his perception that because the man did not speak the language of God or greet his ministers properly he may be that of ‘the Devils’ trickery. “The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he
Professor Wisentower
COMT 101
17 March 2014
Judgment Based on Perception: Society As A Whole
In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” (The Norton Introduction to Literature, Portable 11th Edition, Kelly J. Mays) Gabriel Garcia Marquez includes many theories of what this thing is in Pelayo and Elisendas’ backyard. Pelayo and Elisendas formed their perception based on what they heard. “They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailors voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm”(354). Pelayo and Elisendas made their decision using their hearing to come to a conclusion. Judgment based on perception; the man is a lonely castaway. My theory, Society as whole judges everything based on our own perception. Most of us make judgments’ not based on facts, but simply, perception.
There are many factors to perception, our senses are key to our perception “they called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death to see him, and all she needed was one look to show them their mistake. “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””(354). Her decision was based on her visual perception. Judgment based on perception; the man is an angel.
The parish priest Father Gonzaga based his decision on his idea of what being Godly meant to him. It is his perception that because the man did not speak the language of God or greet his ministers properly he may be that of ‘the Devils’ trickery. “The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he
Cited: Mays, Kelly J. The Introduction to Literature. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2014. Textbook. Marquez, Gabriel Garcia. "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." 1968: 353 - 359. 11th Edition.