The Loss of Faith Exposed in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

The Loss of Faith Exposed in A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is about a small religious town that is faced with having to believe or not believe in something that once held an extremely important place in Catholic history. The inciting incident is when Pelayo finds the bedraggled angel face down in the mud. The rising actions occur within the treatment of the angel by Pelayo, Elisenda and the town’s people, and also in the questioning of the angel by Father Gonzaga. The turning point in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is when the spider woman comes to town and takes focus away from the angel. “ A spectacle like that, full of much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals (Garcia Marquez 443).” The spider woman’s ability to explain what had happened to her also hurts the angel, in that people believe that which can be explained over that which cannot be explained. Garcia Marquez shows the effect of the spider woman on the angel when he writes, “… has already ruined the angels reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely (443).” The falling actions are the angel’s surviving his worst winter and his strengthening. The angel’s departure from the town is the conclusion.

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” takes place in a small coastal South American town, in the aftermath of a violent storm. Marquez writes, “ The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-gray thing “ and says the sands of the beach “had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish (441).” This tells us th...

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