a very old man with enormous wings analysis essay

A Summary and Analysis of ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ is a 1968 short story by the Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez (1927-2014). Like much of his fiction, this story is an example of magic realism (which we’ll say more about below).

Subtitled ‘A Tale for Children’, ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ is about an elderly man with large wings who crashes into the home of a man whose son is ill. The townsfolk gather around to see the man, who some believe is an angel fallen from heaven. Before we offer an analysis of García Márquez’s story, here’s a brief summary of its plot.

Plot summary

The story begins with the titular old man with enormous wings crashing into the muddy yard outside the house of Pelayo, a man who lives with his wife, Elisenda, and their sick son. When the elderly man speaks, it is in a dialect they do not recognise and his accent is that of a sailor’s.

Their female neighbour tells them that the man is an angel who must have been coming for their son, but the incessant rain knocked him off-course. The next day, word spreads, and the whole neighbourhood turns up to take a look at the ‘angel’. By this time, Pelayo has confined the old man to his chicken coop and his son’s fever has abated. They had considered putting the old man on a raft with some food and pushing him out to sea, when their neighbours showed up to see the supposed angel in their midst.

As the day develops, the townsfolk begin to suggest what the fate of this old man should be: one thinks he should become mayor of the world, another reckons he should be made a five-star general, while one thinks he should be ‘put to stud’ so that he could sire a race of superhuman creatures.

The local priest then arrives to inspect the angel, and when the old man doesn’t understand the Latin the priest speaks, Father Gonzaga concludes that the man cannot be a true angel at all. His wings are too filthy, and he lacks the dignity one would expect from an angel. But the townspeople do not believe him, and continue to show up in greater numbers, wanting to see this angel for themselves.

Elisenda, spying an opportunity, decides to charge each of them an admittance fee of five cents if they wish to see the old man with wings. Over the next week, they make a fortune charging people to visit the angel, and their home becomes a site of pilgrimage visited by people with the strangest of afflictions. Speculation continues concerning the ‘angelic’ (or non-angelic) nature of the mysterious old man.

But then a travelling show arrives in town: a woman who was turned into a spider (a tarantula as large as a ram, but with a woman’s head) because she disobeyed her parents. Because the fee to see this ‘act’ is lower than the five cents being charged to see the angel, many townsfolk stop queuing to see the old man with enormous wings and instead go to see the spider-woman, who is also happy to answer all manner of questions about her unusual condition.

Although the queue of people waiting to see the angel disappears as the spider-woman lures away all of the waiting crowd, Pelayo and Elisenda are happy because they can use the money they’ve already made to build a better house. However, the continued presence of the angel in their yard becomes an annoyance to them. Their son spends time with the angel in his chicken coop, and both of them fall ill with chicken pox. They fear that the angel is going to die, but in time he recovers and flies away.

The subtitle which Gabriel García Márquez appended to ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ identifies this short story as ‘a tale for children’, and in many ways, the story might be analysed as a kind of fairy tale. Indeed, its central figure, the old man who may or may not be a genuine angel or some other strange supernatural being, can be viewed as a ‘fairy’ of sorts, whose arrival coincides with the improvement of Pelayo’s son’s health.

Like most good fairy tales, this story also fuses myth or fantasy with more everyday or realistic elements. This combination is also common, however, in works of magic realism : a literary movement with which Gabriel García Márquez was closely associated. In magic realist fiction, we are given a realistic view of the world but there are additional magical elements in the narrative as well.

In ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’, the key magic realist elements are obvious enough: a woman who has been transformed into a giant spider; a man who, angel or otherwise, has wings and is capable of flight.

These two beings are at the heart of the story and its meaning, which is as much about how groups of people respond to unusual elements within a society as it is about the two individuals themselves. Indeed, the old man with his enormous wings is something of a cipher: nobody knows what he thinks about anything because they cannot understand the language he speaks.

His main virtue, we learn, is patience, and he seems content to wait in the chicken coop and does not ask for much from Pelayo and Elisenda (who become very rich from him in a short space of time). The spider-woman, by contrast, was subjected to her supernatural fate because of disobedience – or, to put it another way, because of im patience, in that she wanted to go out to a dance but her parents forbade it, presumably on the grounds that she was too young.

These two special individuals – one very old, the other young; one male, one female; one patient and the other flighty; one capable of flight and the other earthbound – represent polar opposites in many respects. Indeed, whereas the old man is turned into a reluctant circus spectacle by his hosts, the spider-woman arrives as part of a travelling show, and intends to sell her story (as we’d say nowadays) and court public interest.

They also represent very different things. The townsfolk are sceptical of whether the old man is really an angel from heaven, but even after Father Gonzaga tells them outright that the man is no angel, they continue to turn up at the house so they can catch a glimpse of the mysterious figure. The spider-woman clearly has been transformed into an arachnid, as they can see this with their own eyes, but there are no heavenly claims made about her fate.

One question a reader of ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ might ask is whether the old man’s claims to ‘angelhood’ actually matter: if he is not angelic but merely a strange winged man, does that make him any less of a spectacle worthy of study and speculation? Clearly the ‘freakish’ elements of spider-woman’s affliction are enough in themselves to warrant crowds of people flocking (and paying) to see her.

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Irony in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” Essay

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This response is to the short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Pelayo, a man who hunts crabs, finds a weak and decrepit angel on the beach and rescues it. The news spreads far and quickly, but the creature fails to live up to the expectations of the curious crowd and is soon forgotten. Nevertheless, the family earns a considerable amount of money that allows it to escape poverty and begin living decently. It still treats the angel poorly, considering him a nuisance, and is relieved when the visitor recovers from his plight and flies away.

The story has an ironic quality, as the angel can be considered the family’s savior yet receives neglect. It can be inferred that he was sent to Pelayo by God to help him, but the superstitious crowd gives the arrival the meaning that he intended to claim the man’s sick child. It is likely that the angel’s stay was exactly as he planned and that he achieved his objective. However, since he did not perform his miracle with pomp that is usually associated with Christian miracles, his help went unrecognized. The most significant hint that reinforces this view is the angel’s treatment of the child, whose chickenpox he shares, presumably to ease the boy’s burden.

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IvyPanda. (2021, June 3). Irony in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings-by-g-marquez/

"Irony in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”." IvyPanda , 3 June 2021, ivypanda.com/essays/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings-by-g-marquez/.

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IvyPanda . 2021. "Irony in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”." June 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings-by-g-marquez/.

1. IvyPanda . "Irony in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”." June 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings-by-g-marquez/.

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IvyPanda . "Irony in “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”." June 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/a-very-old-man-with-enormous-wings-by-g-marquez/.

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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Gabriel garcía márquez.

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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: Introduction

A very old man with enormous wings: plot summary, a very old man with enormous wings: detailed summary & analysis, a very old man with enormous wings: themes, a very old man with enormous wings: quotes, a very old man with enormous wings: characters, a very old man with enormous wings: symbols, a very old man with enormous wings: literary devices, a very old man with enormous wings: theme wheel, brief biography of gabriel garcía márquez.

Historical Context of A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

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• Full Title: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children
• Where Written: Bogotá
• When Published: 1955
• Literary Period: 20th Century Latin American Fiction
• Genre: Short Fiction / Magic Realism
• Setting: A small, nondescript town on the coast of South America
• Climax: The old man eventually regains strength and flies away
• Antagonist: Pelayo, Elisando, and the town inhabitants
• Point of View: Third person omniscient

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Márquez, Gabriel García

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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

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Analysis: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”

Gabriel García Márquez is famous for popularizing what is now referred to as “magical realism”—a genre that incorporates supernatural elements into an otherwise prosaic setting . Many of García Márquez’s works feature this strategic mixture of fantasy and reality, which he learned from his superstitious grandmother, who told stories in such a way that the supernatural seemed almost natural and mundane. Such is the case in this story, whose title speaks matter-of-factly about a seemingly supernatural being—an old man who simply happens to have enormous wings. His wings do attract attention within the story, as many characters first view him as a circus attraction. However, by the story’s end, the novelty of his wings disappears even for them.

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Home — Essay Samples — Literature — A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings — A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Márquez: the Role of Understanding in People’s Views

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Márquez: The Role of Understanding in People’s Views

• Categories: A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Book Review Novel

About this sample

Words: 614 |

Published: Sep 1, 2020

Words: 614 | Page: 1 | 4 min read

Table of contents

Introduction, plot of the story and its meanings, "a very old man with enormous wings": theme and symbols, cultural and literary context, references:.

• García Márquez, G. (1984). A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings. In Leaf Storm and Other Stories (pp. 3-10). Harper & Row.
• Bell-Villada, G. H. (1990). García Márquez: The Man and His Work (Rev. ed.). The University of North Carolina Press.
• Bloom, H. (Ed.). (1989). Gabriel García Márquez (Modern Critical Views). Chelsea House Publishers.
• Bell, M. (1994). Gabriel García Márquez: Solitude and Solidarity. St. Martin’s Press.
• Martin, G. (Ed.). (1999). Gabriel García Márquez: A Life. Knopf.

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A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

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Illustration by Stuart Herrington

This touching story of Marquez’s falls upon an old man in a courtyard – discovered with enormous wings.

A short story written in 1955 by Marquez, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wrings” falls within the genre of magic realism which Marquez mastered. It’s included in his short story collection Leaf Storm .

The literary mode called “magic realism” could be characterized as one where the magical and supernatural intrudes without any fanfare on mundane, everyday reality. The critic, Angel Flores, has defined it as “an amalgamation of realism and fantasy.” In magic realist fiction the magical elements are equal to and as valid as the realistic narration. One of the markers of this style is the authorial indifference to the disconcerting intrusions of extraordinary supernatural events into the realistic fictional world.

Thus, as Angel Flores explains, the story proceeds with “logical precision” as if nothing extraordinary took place. Some critics believe that magic realism developed in opposition to an Eurocentric rational consciousness that dominated literature. By foregrounding the native,hidden and suppressed, magical realism, according to critic Ray Verzasconi and others, evolved into

an expression of the New World reality which at once combines the rational elements of the European super-civilization, and the irrational elements of a primitive America.

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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A very old man with enormous wings themes, human reception of the supernatural.

The two major supernatural occurrences in the story are the old man with wings and the girl who has been turned into a spider. The people in the story treat the old man as an oddity, but not as a supernatural oddity: more a freak of nature than something beyond nature. The old man appears to be nothing more than a frail human with wings, and so his status as an angel is endlessly debated. Father Gonzaga thinks that he cannot be an angel because he lacks dignity and splendor. Of course this begs the question of whether the angel lacks dignity intrinsically, or whether he lacks dignity because of the way he is treated - cooped up in a chicken cage. Perhaps it is the people who lack dignity, not the old man. The old man's other supernatural characteristic - his incredible patience in the face of his treatment - does not make much of an impression on the majority of the people, who are happy to exploit him until bored with him.

The Spider-Girl is a clear contrast with the Old Man. Whereas he is difficult - if not impossible - to interpret, the Spider-Girl delights the people with the clarity of her story. She disobeyed her parents as so was turned into a spider by god. Unlike the Angel, the people do not debate her status as a spider: it's taken for granted. This tendency of the public to accept supernatural explanations for such simple morality tales but to deny them in the case of complexity and frailty (as exemplified by the old man) may be satirical. He may identify as a writer with the confused reception of the old man while ridiculing the public's appreciation of the simple tale of the Spider-Girl - who may be read to represent simpler works of fiction.

The Blurry Distinction between Natural and Supernatural

Marquez contrasts the supernatural in the story with vivid natural details, thus conflating the supernatural and the everyday. Pelayo does not see a large difference between a natural oddity - the invasion of his house by crabs - and a supernatural one - the invasion of his house by a decrepit angel. Indeed, when Pelayo and Elisenda build their mansion, they secure it from crabs and angels alike, thus treating both as equal nuisances. Moreover, the angel's wings are described in gross, vivid detail, and when he first appears they are crippled by mud. He is described in one place as a senile vulture, in another as a 'huge decrepit hen among the fascinated chickens', and in paragraph four the crowds treat him as a 'circus animal instead of a supernatural creature.' These comments serve to blur the distinction between the natural and supernatural. Garcia Maquez may be suggesting that such a distinction is unnecessary, or that the people are simply blind to it. Whether it is a failure to impose the boundary or ignore it is a matter of interpretation - and the story, ultimately, invites interpretation more than it invites meaning.

What is Human?

Just as the Old Man is described in terms of his animal characteristics, so too he is described as human. Father Gonzaga thinks that he must be an imposter: he does not possess the dignity that people expect from angels. Also, in paragraph two the Old Man is described as a rag picker, and Pelayo and Elisenda decide that he must be a sailor. Despite these human characteristics, the Old Man is treated inhumanly. He is penned up with the chickens and displayed, forced to eat mush, and branded. This capacity to dehumanize a creature because of one unfamiliar characteristic - wings - quietly damns the people in the story. They see the Old Man's humanity yet don't feel the need to respond humanely.

In contrast there is the Spider-Girl. The narrator notes that the spider girl is a much more appealing attraction because her story is full of human truth. Because her story is simply and straightforwardly moral, she is appealing, whereas the old man - full of mystery and complexity - is unappealing. Garcia Marquez invites us to consider that the truly human qualities in life are the Old Man's - uncertainty, mystery, strangeness, open-endedness - whereas the trite moralizing of the Spider-Girl is actually far from human experience. It merely consoles the people, whereas the Old Man - by revealing our cruelty - shows them their true nature.

Uncertainty in the Narrator

Uncertain, ambiguity and doubt are constant throughout the story, and Marquez achieves these affects in several different ways. For instance, he uses a constantly changing narrative voice to complicate both the setting and the events in question. At first the third-person omniscient point of view, the narrator gradually reveals opinions on certain points, supporting some characters and condemning other. Marquez thus always ties his story to a teller - we aren't able to get a clean read on the situation, or even to know if it happened at all. This narrative level of uncertainty precludes a simple moral tale that pretends to speak universally.

Humans Must Interpret Events

The story illustrates the human need to interpret life's events. The Old Man, an exaggerated dramatization of any strange event, is interpreted in many different ways. Individual characters - the neighbor woman, Pelayo, Elisenda, Father Gonzaga, and all the onlookers - try to attach meaning to the Old Man, or to reduce his meaning, in terms of their own lives. Thus Garcia Marquez stages the inevitable situatedness of human experience. We see things through our own eyes, and the search for a universally applicable meaning is inevitably doomed.

Still, even though we cannot settle for a simple interpretation that applies to everyone, we can still realize that we think and feel from our own perspective. The major failure of the people in "Very Old Man" is not that they fail to interpret the Angel, but that they fail to acknowledge their own role in the interpretive process. They cannot see themselves with any perspective, in other words. Pelayo and Elisenda never seem grateful to the angel, though he makes their fortune. They simply imprison him. Similarly, other characters lack perspective on the Angel. They argue for their own interpretation of the events, then grow bored, never pausing to consider the Old Man's possible feelings, never bothering to notice their own narrow vision.

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Which statement best identifies theme of the text?

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Re-read paragraph 4. How does the language in paragraph 4 contribute to the tone of the story?

B. The straightforward, objective descriptions of the events and characters’ feelings create a removed, neutral tone.

Study Guide for A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings study guide contains a biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
• A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Summary
• Character List

Essays for A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings.

• Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Human Nature
• Anorexics and Angels
• A Crab, a Spider, and the Noisy Stars Above: An Analysis of the Magical Absurdity in Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
• Illustrious Feathers
• Ambiguity in Gabriel Garcia Marquez: An Angel or Just "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings"

Wikipedia Entries for A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

• Introduction