Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The act of being humane is to show compassion as well as show benevolence. This characteristic seems to be hard to find sometimes, and Marquez decides to show that everyone has their moments with being inhumane in his writing. He uses his characters to portray the lack of humanity, however on different levels. Marquez uses Pelayo, Elisenda, Father Gonzaga and the townspeople to represent the absence of humanity in how people live in the present.
Marquez uses the characters Pelayo and Elisenda to portray the lack of humanity humans consists of these days. After the couple finds the angel in the yard, they contemplate the decision of whether or not to beat the angel to death. Pelayo does not beat the angel, however they do treat him in an inhumane way: “Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club, and before going to bed, he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop.” The couple soon begins to use the angel to benefit economically: “Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue, for in less than a week had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims
They used the old man as a form of amusement and entertainment instead of treating him in a humane matter. When the townspeople first met the strange man, they tried to find out if he really was an angel by a treating him like an animal and putting him through certain tasks: “At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom, were the food prescribed for angels.” Not only were they attempting to force feed the man, but they began to act in an utterly barbaric and hostile manner when: “They burned his side with an iron for brading steers.” There was an obvious shortage in humanity show in the actions of the townspeople towards the