Man With Enormous Wings Faith

People often associate faith with religion; if you are religious, then you must be faithful. By definition, being faithful means you have a complete trust or confidence in something and it is almost always associated with a belief in a power that is above that of human control. Faith is “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). For centuries mankind has used this belief in one way or another as a way of explaining the things that go beyond the scope of human logic and reasoning. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” is an illustration of society’s lack of values, judgements, and inconsistency of faith. Marquez writes about the natural and the supernatural by using
a mystical creature in a daily setting. When the characters in the story are confronted with a religious symbol they each react differently which makes the reader question what would they do. An angel is always seen as a symbol of purity.
They represent the communication between higher and lower energies or communication between a person and the God(s) they believe in. If you would ask someone to draw a picture of an angel or what they thought an angel looked like the end result would be a drawing of a beautiful person/figure who is all dressed in white with big incredible wings. Marquez sets the tone of the story in the beginning in the most natural way, the way he describes rain. “The world had been sad since Tuesday.” Pelayo, the father of a sick newborn, killed many crabs inside his home during the rainstorm. After three days he decides to throw them away, and to his finding, an old man was stuck in the mud in his rear courtyard. An old man with a set of wings. The old man’s condition was weak, awful, and disoriented. He did not possess the looks of an angel and freakishly looked like an ordinary human. The angel didn’t speak a recognizable language. Pelayo’s neighbor suggested the old man was here to take his newborn’s life, who is sick. After the arrival of the old man, the newborn recovers fortunately. Pelayo and his wife, Elisenda decide to keep the old man in their chicken coop. Word of mouth travels and the whole village is interested in seeing the old man with enormous wings. Even though the old man had enormous wings which represents a religious symbol, the village, including the local priest, Father Gonzaga, have doubts. Rather they say that the old
man with enormous wings is a carnival trick set up by the devil to confuse the unwary. The way Marquez illustrates the angel toys with the religious image of an angel being pure and white. There is a certain irony that the objects that were supposed to carry the old man over the clouds- his wings – were the very reason he was stuck in a chicken coop. Using magical realism, Marquez blends human nature tendencies with supernatural/magical elements.