A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

The fictional tale entitled A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is an intriguing story which is expressed very well in the title. The story is about just that, an old man with wings. The only aspect that the title fails to point out is that he is an angel. I find the story to be somewhat interesting; however, it isn’t exactly hard to put down.

The one thing about this story that stands out the most, is the author’s use of tone. This is the main aspect of the story that jumps out at you. The usage of tone and detail really works to the story’s advantage. The first paragraph alone is filled with descriptions that really set the tone and make you feel like you are there.

“On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had 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. 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 it was that was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.”

This paragraph does a good job of setting the tone. It gives you the feeling that you are in an old, small town. One of those little towns where everyone knows each other and the adventures and gossip of the school children travels town wide.

As the story goes on, the characters begin wondering why the angel is in there presence. Was he in the middle of a flight and was forced to land because of the weather? Or was he in front of their house because he was coming to help the family? They assumed that he was coming to help the child.

“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”

Once everyone gets settled in the fact that an angel has crash landed in their town, they start to wonder what they sho...

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...n for the family and all of the talk about the angel is quickly intercepted by a lady who is cursed with the body of a tarantula. After a while of everyone ignoring the angel, his wings heal. One day Elisenda looks out the kitchen window to see the angel fly away. He is struggling to fly because of his sore wings, but eventually he disappears in the horizon. This finishes the story with the feeling of a positive tone. Everything seems to be a little bit brighter at this point. Not only did the angel manage to recover and go back to wherever he came from, but at this point the family was quite wealthy because of the money brought in by the tourists who had come to see the fallen angel. There is no use in wondering if the angel came for a purpose anymore, his presence helped to completely turn the family’s lifestyle around. Their new mansion was very beautiful. It had gardens and balconies, as well as nets to keep the crabs in. This kept the crabs from getting into the house and making everything dirty, which was mentioned earlier in the story as the reason that the child was sick in the first place. I guess Elisenda was right when she said that the angel had come to help the baby.