A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings By Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Literary Analysis of A very old Man with Enormous Wings
This short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is an example of magic-realism. Through this story, Marquez introduces four concepts with regard to how we might react to certain things like the presence of an angel or a miracle. These kinds of divine events are very common in Hispanic culture; most of them are just folklorism. Marquez creates a story that is very detailed but is opposite to the reality of angels that we’re familiar with, specially the Catholic Church’s depiction of an angel as a prominent creature, not the person described in the story. The appearance: Most people of this fishing village believe the old man is an angel, but according to the description given for an angel his appearance is quite contrary: “...When Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. 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 side of his wings was 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.” At …show more content…
By the way, the disbelief of the Holy Church is also other evidence: “But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out in the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings.” Simply, if the man does not meet the prerequisites to be considered an angel like flying or superpowers, he must be an ordinary human
This short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is an example of magic-realism. Through this story, Marquez introduces four concepts with regard to how we might react to certain things like the presence of an angel or a miracle. These kinds of divine events are very common in Hispanic culture; most of them are just folklorism. Marquez creates a story that is very detailed but is opposite to the reality of angels that we’re familiar with, specially the Catholic Church’s depiction of an angel as a prominent creature, not the person described in the story. The appearance: Most people of this fishing village believe the old man is an angel, but according to the description given for an angel his appearance is quite contrary: “...When Father Gonzaga went into the chicken coop and said good morning to him in Latin. 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 side of his wings was 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.” At …show more content…
By the way, the disbelief of the Holy Church is also other evidence: “But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out in the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings.” Simply, if the man does not meet the prerequisites to be considered an angel like flying or superpowers, he must be an ordinary human