Marquez's A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Supernatural Elements in Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
Magical realism is the approach that connects the natural and the supernatural together in a story to make the supernatural seem real. Marquez gives expressive details in the story that makes the supernatural hard to distinguish from the real. There are two unique supernatural appearances, the old man with wings and the girl that was turned into a spider. The angel is the magical realism elect which is the very old man with wings.
A vivid picture is given when Marquez describes the state of Pelayo’s house after three days of rain. “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” (Marquez 405).

“But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren't a supernatural creature but a circus animal” (Marquez 406). The people of the village try to figure him out but they are very rude and disrespectful because he is not the same as them. Moreover, the old man’s silence only seems to fuel the crowd’s disrespect and abuse. He is very patient with the disrespect, and this seems unnatural for anyone to be treated this way and not respond. The wings would make one think that he could leave, fly away, from all the commotion but they seem to hinder him. The crowd of people feel as though he owes them something. The miracles they have demanded go unfulfilled and as a result, the crowd moves on. This shows how selfish one can be looking out only for their personal