Old Man With Enormous Wings Symbolism

In the short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez, the most prominent theme is compassion and how it relates with a secondary theme of cruelty. The author expresses this theme through the use of allegory, symbolism, and juxtaposition. An allegory is used where the meaning of a greater concept is conveyed with the aid of a more everyday object. Symbolism is literary device that contains several meanings, often concealed at first sight. Juxtaposition is wherein the author two related entities close together in literature to highlight the contrast between the two and compare them.

Allegory is utilized in the story to show how the old and beaten down angel is inherently good. Angels are typically depicted as grand saviors, and their personalities are assumed to coincide with that.

However, this angel is not glamorous, and is very ragged, which makes the family assume that he is not a real angel, as explained in the quote “There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud...That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm,”. He contradicts these ideas by being patient and tolerant, though he does not look the part, even when they capture him and poke him and abuse him.
An example of symbolism is both the Spider Woman and the Angel. The people in the village treat them both very different, despite their similarity as a miracle. After hearing of the Angel, hundreds of villagers flood to Pelayo’s house, wishing to see him perform miracles and prove physical evidence of their faith. The old man’s novelty wears off when he proves incapable of performing “true miracles” and can only procure minor “consolation miracles”. In response, the spectators flock to the Spider Woman, who tells a heart-wrenching story with a clear, easy to understand lesson in morality that contrasts sharply with the mystery of the old man’s existence and purpose. Although no less strange than the winged old man, the Spider Woman is easier to sympathize with and with “A spectacle like that, full of so 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”. The old man, barely conscious in his filthy chicken coop, can’t match her appeal, even though some suspect that he came from the heavens. They treat the Spider Woman with more compassion and the Angel with more cruelty, only because, in the villagers' eyes, he is not as capable as proving himself and their faith to them.
Juxtaposition is present in many different ways, but one of the most empathized is the contrast between the Angel and the villagers.

The Angel is patient, and shows kindness through his attempts at miracles and how he refuses to leave Elisenda and Pelayo’s house for a while after he is free to do so. “His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. Especially during the first days, when the hens pecked at him, searching for the stellar parasites that proliferated in his wings, and the cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him, trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing,” puts the acts of the villagers and the acts of the Angel into comparison. The two conflicting types of people is meant to show how differently they show compassion and cruelty. The short story serves as a way to examine the human response to those who are weak, dependent, and different. There are moments of cruelty and callousness throughout, mostly at the hand of those who came to visit the angel. However, amid the exploitation, there are moments of compassion, although they are few and far

between.
To conclude, in the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez, there are many examples of literary devices meant to express the main theme of compassion. Through the use of these three elements, the author has made the theme clear to his readers.