Short Story 'A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings'

Human Response to Strangeness

In Gabriel García Márquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” the main character, Pelayo, encounters a supernatural being which he abuses to gain monetary value. When the strange man with wings came, the whole town was baffled and mesmerized because they were all curious of where the man is from. In the character of the old man with wings, García Márquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” exemplifies the relationship between tolerance and suffering.
In the beginning of the story, “Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw [crabs] into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench” (535). The short story begins by describing
an unpleasant situation which foreshadows the prevalence of pain and patience throughout the story. “The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what but was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard” (535). The old man was introduced through Pelayo’s eyes. His reaction implies how the old man will be treated by people: the old man will be treated like something rather than a human-being. Pelayo calls his wife to look at the creature and
“they both looked at the fallen body with mute stupor.
He was dressed like a rag picker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather had taken way any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud” (535-536).
The narrator describes how miserable the old man is in. “Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiffs 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” (536). Pelayo’s actions implies that he views the old man like a fugitive. The old man is seen as a monster that needs to be incarcerated because of its potential to hurt people based upon his appearance. As the story progressed, “they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest tolerance, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal” (536). The lack of respect and belittlement of the neighborhood toward the old man, implies how being different is a disadvantage. The next morning “he was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peel and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him” (536). The old man first seen as an angel is treated like an object without emotions.
The townspeople implies the inevitability of human cruelty to each other. The town called upon the priest to confirm if the creature is an angel and “the parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet his ministers. Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back of his wings strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels” (536).
The old man is denied of recognition as a holy creature and a place of refuge because he does not meet the criteria set by the church. As days go by and their yard gets crowded “Elisenda, her spine all twisted from sweeping up so much marketplace trash, then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel” (536). They continuously disregard the suffering of the old man to profit from his existence. Although Pelayo and Elisenda are aware of their actions, they disregard their beliefs for wealth and comfort. Ignoring his present situation “[the old man] spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire” (537). The lighting of candles around coop to grant personal wishes and miracles contradicts how the old man see the light inside the coop. It symbolizes how he is both revered as a monster and an angel. His mightiness and impediment is his attitude as the narrator explains how “his only virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead” (537).
The old man represents kindness towards other living creatures despite of how people treats him. “Although many thought that his reaction had been one not of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not hat of a hero taking his ease but that od a cataclysm in repose” (537). The old man’s reaction shows his vulnerability and his threat, thereby justifying his need for respect from people around him. His response to pain also illustrates how human-like he was for having emotions. Throughout his stay in Pelayo’s residence, “the chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t receive any attention.
If they washed it down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost and was turning the new house into an old one” (537). The old man’s unsanitary captivity in the chicken coop permits the existence of a foul odor which Pelayo and his family has to deal with. As the chicken coop was destroyed “the angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man [in Pelayo’s house]. They would drive him out of the bedroom with a broom and a moment later find him in the kitchen” (538). The existence of the old man became a usual sight in Pelayo and his family’s life. As time passed by “he seemed to be in so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he’d been duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that is was awful living in that hell full of angels” (538). Naturally, living with an angel is considered heavenly but the old man’s suffering made Elisenda’s life miserable which resembles the old man’s life as their
captive. Throughout the story, the old man symbolizes suffering and patience. The old man is introduced in bad condition where he was kept in a chicken coop, poked, abused and neglected by Pelayo, his family and neighbors. The old man’s wings serves as a metaphor for natural human condition which is cruel and selfish. The story exemplifies the irrational human response to disadvantaged individuals who need help and compassion rather than cruelty and discrimination.