Comparing A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings And A Hunger Artist

An English novelist and poet, Thomas Hardy, called patience a “blending of moral courage with physical timidity.” To have the capacity or willingness to wait and to endure is a vital human virtue that is becoming rare in this restless world. The unique protagonists of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and Franz Kafka’s “A Hunger Artist” manifest attributes of patience, tolerance, and self-control in the face of suffering for people’s entertainment. Both the authors depict true human nature in regard to the relationship between the protagonists and the insensitive world around them. Moreover, the effects of realistic characterization as well as mythical allusions highlight the struggles facing these individuals who

are different from what society considers being normal.
The events and actions within “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” revolve around a poor, ordinary family and an old winged man who is thought to be a fallen angel from the sky. Meanwhile, “A Hunger Artist” focuses on a professional faster who yearns to be respected and appreciated by his audiences for his craft. Both narratives occur in an unspecified time and place, although “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” seems to take place in a small seaside community, while the metropolitan setting of “A Hunger Artist” is easily recognizable. In addition, Marquez’s fictional tale presents magic realism, which merges fantastical elements into an otherwise mundane environment. On the other hand, Kafka’s story is more associated with modernism. The magic realist style that Marquez incorporates in his works is exemplified through the reactions of the characters in the story, particularly when Pelayo and Elisenda found the old winged man in a pitiful state and when their neighbor lady assumed the mysterious man to be an angel; they were surprised, and yet they never questioned its existence.
The most apparent difference between the two short stories is that the thoughts of the angel are completely unknown to the reader, while the hunger artist’s musings are conveyed clearly. Kafka describes the starving artist’s personality and behavior by recounting the story in omniscient third-person point of view and through the style of stream of consciousness. In the hunger artist’s mind, he believes that he is the only one who can endure fasting longer. As the narrator points out, he becomes “troubled in spirit” when no one takes him and his “art” seriously or when the credibility of his fasting is doubted. During an incident, he reacted “with an outburst of fury” and began “to shake the bars of his cage like a wild animal” (223) when a sympathizer remarked that his “melancholy” may be caused by not being able to eat. Even so, both the angel and the hunger artist remain a mystery to their social environments as well as the reader.
The angel and the hunger artist are portrayed as males with rather unflattering physical appearances; they are nevertheless the sources of people’s curiosity. Angels are commonly perceived to be beautiful creatures, usually wearing white, with spiritual presence. But when Pelayo discovered the angel struggling in the mud on the beach, he was a decrepit, “dressed like a ragpicker,” and whose “huge buzzard wings” were “dirty and plucked” (144). The angel’s most noticeable feature is his enormous wings, which gained him the attention of the townspeople, “the curious [who] came from far away,” and even the local priest. The crowds are fascinated with the angel; rather than helping the poor man or treating him with respect and dignity, the villagers turn him into a sideshow attraction. Meanwhile, in “A Hunger Artist,” fasting brings about the protagonist’s corpselike frame. His “skeleton thinness” frightens some people, leading them to avoid his performance. He would look pale, “with his ribs sticking out prominently” (219). Others would not even bear to look at him, as “the sight of him was too much for them,” and “it was dissatisfaction with himself that had worn him down” (221). Despite the fact that their disturbing appearances instilled unease in others, both the angel and the hunger artist drew in large crowds of curious spectators who come to gawk at them and entertain themselves with. However, their sudden fame does not last long due to the presence of new attractions, and eventually, the public loses interest in them.
Both the angel and the hunger artist are confined in a cage, which symbolizes the barrier between them and the rest of society.

Both also never choose to leave their cage, although the hunger artist is free to do so when he pleases. The angel comes off at first as a threat and a freak of nature simply because he appeared out of nowhere and he does not posses the grandeur that the people imagine an angel should have. The villagers treat him not as “a supernatural creature but a circus animal” in a manner that is disrespectful, ignorant, and inhumane. For instance, they torture the old man by locking him up in a chicken coop, tossing him food “without the slightest reverence” (145), pelting him with stones, and even burning his side “with an iron for branding steers” (147). The angel has become a spectacle and is paraded for profit before the crowds. Everyone, especially Pelayo and Elisenda, benefits from the angel’s passive endurance. Amidst the bustle and the exploitation, the angel takes “no part in his own act,” keeping to himself and remaining indifferent to the villagers’ taunts. He tolerates the abuses with “the patience of a dog who had no illusions” (149) and stays aloof from various visitors, who upon hearing news of his existence flock to seek healing or see him perform miracles. He demonstrates incredible patience under such harsh circumstances, though “his only supernatural virtue” (147) does not make much of an impression to the people; instead, they take

advantage of his unwavering patience, which ultimately transforms the lives of Pelayo and Elisenda. On a rare occasion, he makes a fearsome gesture of power and exhibits anger when the villagers attempted to brand him; the narrator relates the scene, “he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem to be of this world” (147). Henceforth, the crowds gradually diminished, finally leaving the old man alone.
Much like the angel, the hunger artist is seen by those around him as an oddity.

He is also the subject of others’ suspicion, and he distances himself from people. Neither the angel nor the hunger artist seem to have any desire to communicate with their visitors, such that the hunger artist does not respond to any of the attention that the onlookers give him; instead, the hunger artist sits in his cage, “withdrawing deep into himself, paying no attention to anyone or anything” and “sometimes giving a courteous nod, answering questions with a constrained smile, or perhaps stretching an arm through the bars” (219). Even at the pinnacle of his career, the hunger artist still feels underappreciated by his spectators. The hunger artist’s audience is not at all interested in his art of fasting so much as it fascinates them of his suffering. Rather than respecting the hunger artist for his self-control and integrity, the public trivializes his artistic endeavor. Since the hunger artist holds his fasting in high regard, he grows especially frustrated with the “permanent watchers” who do not take their duties earnestly “because they made him feel miserable; they made his fast seem unendurable” (220). Furthermore, the hunger artist depends on the constant support and praise of his spectators to make it through life and above all, the merits of his art understood. Sadly, towards the end, visitors pass his cage with hardly a glance at

him.
Kafka draws a parallel between the hunger artist and Jesus Christ, the symbolic figure of suffering. The hunger artist is referred to as a “suffering martyr,” which is Christ-like (222). The hunger artist provides entertainment to his spectators and Christ provides healing and teaching. The hunger artist primarily wants others to believe in his art of fasting, just as Jesus Christ hoped for the people to have faith in him. In addition, both live ascetically and practice physical and spiritual endurance, with the hunger artist detaching himself from earthly pleasures. Moreover, the impresario in the story limits the hunger artist’s fasts to forty days, which mirror Christ’s forty-day fasting period in the desert while enduring the devil’s temptations to prove himself to God. The hunger artist also resists the temptation of food as means to prove himself to others, though he reveals at the end that it was only easy for him to fast because he “couldn’t find the food [he] liked” (227). After performing their services for the people, they both meet the same tragic end – a public death. Meanwhile, the old winged man embodies some of the characteristics of Jesus Christ. The angel is rejected by the townspeople due to the fact that he appeared “much too human” (145); similarly, the Jews refused to accept Christ as the Messiah because he was not who they thought he should be. The angel’s remarkable capacity to tolerate abuses represents Christ’s struggle to maintain peace in the midst of mistreatment. Furthermore, Jesus Christ suffered for humanity, whereas in the two short stories, both the angel and the hunger artist suffer because of humanity.
“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and “A Hunger Artist” each offer a unique insight into human nature. For the most part, a civilized society is shown to be unenlightened and uncharitable towards the unfamiliar. Ignorance and the inability of man to appreciate the extraordinary reveal the vulnerability of human nature. The characters in the two short stories, as well as the spectators, possess little logic; not to mention, they are thoughtless, and they do not have the slightest compassion for the angel and the hunger artist, or for anyone whom they perceive as an outsider. Subsequently, both the angel and the hunger artist were never allowed to attain their ultimate goals. Initially, it is said that the angel came down to Earth to take the soul of Pelayo and Elisenda’s dying child, but because he was different from the rest, he was treated very poorly. Meanwhile, the hunger artist simply aspired to be honored and be recognized for his feats; however, since public interest in hunger artists waned, onlookers started to have doubts and public sympathy for the hunger artist inevitably diminished. At the end, the two main characters leave the natural world in quite ambiguous ways, with the angel flying off and disappearing over the horizon – the mystery of his angelhood remains unsolved – and the hunger artist uttering his last words, realizing that his desires could never be fulfilled in the fickle world in which he lived.