Cristen Simone

November 18, 2014

Dr. Verrone
Paper 2

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

After a chaotic period of heavy rain and storms and the sickness of Pelayo and Elisendas
child, Pelayo discovers that a very old man with enormous wings is stuck on their patio. A
neighbor insists that this foreign person is an angel but Pelayo and Elisenda decide to keep him
locked up. A few days pass and the couples child is not sick anymore and they question if the
angel did it. They later plan to put him out to sea with water for a few days but before this
happens the town has heard about this supernatural being. They all come and pay to see this
creature and make fun of him like a circus act. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, a short
story by Gabriel Garca Mrquez, depicts the element of magic realism and introduces the
presence of an invading mysterious being and the reactions by the community.
The questions of whether or not this man is human or a supernatural being continues
throughout this short story. The first reaction to this presence is from Pelayo; his reaction is not
real at first and he describes it as a nightmare. The presence is described as a bald man with
few teeth in his mouth. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled
in the mud (Marquez, 1). His wings are the main supernatural attribute to this foreign character
and they are covered in mud. This description of him suggests the opposite of what an angel
would look like. However, once Pelayos neighbor saw this man she suggests he is an angel.
"He's an angel, He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the

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rain knocked him down" (Marquez, 2). The common belief is that an angel comes for the sick or
the ill and in this case it would be for Pelayo and Elisendas sick newborn. A few days later, the
baby was healed; was it the angel?
The perspectives about this presence persisted and this time the whole neighborhood
became involved. Pelayo and Elisenda decide to lock this angel up in their chicken coop.
When the couple wakes up the next morning they spot the whole neighborhood in their yard:
But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the
whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the
slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he
weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal.
(Marquez 2)
This supernatural being that was originally considered an angel is now being treated as
a freak for the community to see. The way the crowd treats him shows that the neighborhood
cannot accept the fact that an angel could be among them. Elisenda joins the community and
treats this man like an animal by keeping him locked up and makes others pay to come see him.
She used him to her benefit and becomes rich off of his misery.The last opinion comes from the
priest when he comes to inspect this being and he claims it is not an angel. When the old man
fails to understand Latin, the priest denounces him as an impostor (Slomski). This can also
suggest that this being might be the opposite of an angel and could be the devil or an evil being.
The interpretations by the members of the community suggest an element of magic
realism. Magic realism is present in this short story by contrasting qualities of an angel and
qualities of a human old man. Magic realism is a style that uses realistic details alongside
magical details that make it hard for the reader to distinguish fantasy from reality. Marquez does

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this by combining details of Pelayo and Elisendas life with supernatural elements such as a
flying man and a spider woman to create a balance between a fairy tale and a typical story.
Marquez does this from the beginning of the story with his descriptions of the rain, and the storm
that brought crabs and mud everywhere. He describesthe setting, The world has been sad since
Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing and the sands of the beach, which on March
nights glimmered like powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish (Marquez
1). This strange setting sets the town for when the supernatural winged man appears who is
worn out and dirty. The mystery continues after a woman comes into town who is half spider;
the town has no interest in the man with wings so he flys away and we never know his identity.
It is suggested that the old man may be imaginary because he is described as disappearing in an
imaginary dot on the horizon at the end of the story (Slomski). This is Elisendas awakening
and allows her back into reality. She made money off of this old man but now that he is gone
and the supernatural or fantasy is out of her life she has to go back to her everyday life.
Marquez creates a pressure between the old man's magical and human qualities, leaving
us unable to fit the character into a comfortable mental category (Faulkner). The oldman is far
too human and does not match our cultural image of angels: perfect, powerful, majestic, and
immortal (Faulkner). He also appears to not be sent by god but he does have magical qualities
and might have healed the child. A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is filled with everyones
interpretations on what this supernatural being is. We are left with many opinions of it being an
angel, an old man, or just a freak to entertain people with.The man with enormous wings
contains an element of magic realism through a mysterious being and the interpretations about
him from the community.

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Works Cited
Cassill, R. V., and Joyce Carol Oates. The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction.
New York: Norton,
1998. Print.

Faulkner, Tom. "An overview of 'A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,'." Gale Online
Encyclopedia.
Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource Center. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.

Slomski, Genevieve. "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings." Masterplots II: Short
Story Series, Revised
Edition (2004): 1-2. Literary Reference Center. Web. 17 Nov. 2014.