A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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Imagine what it would be like to come across an ‘Angel’. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is a story of a man, Pelayo, his wife Elisenda, a town full of curious onlookers, and an old man who happens to have very large wings. This story blends everyday specifics with the aspects of fantasy, making the conventional line between reality and magic very hard to keep straight. In the short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez demonstrates through characterization, symbolism, and the stories plot that the reactions of the townspeople to the ‘Angel’ reflect their instincts as human beings towards the unknown as both bad and good. Marquez demonstrates within his short story through his characterization that there is the existence of cruelty and compassion in regards to the unknown. The existence is apparent throughout the entire story. The author writes, “Against the judgment of the wise neighbor woman, for whom angels in those times were the fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy, they did not have the heart to club him to death” (Marquez, 357). This sentence is the perfect example of the compassion that Pelayo and Elisenda showed for this old man’s life. They showed the extraordinarily different old man mercy when they were expected not to. The author described the cruelness of the townspeople when …show more content…

The author explains, “Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and

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