A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
Gabriel García Márquez
Context
Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1928 in a small village in Colombia near the
Caribbean coast. His parents were poor, so his maternal grandparents raised him, and he
would later claim that he drew much of his literary inspiration from his grandmother’s
storytelling. After attending college and law school, he began a successful career as a
journalist but continued to pursue his interest in writing fiction.
García Márquez published his first collection of short stories, Leaf Storm, which included
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” in 1955. The book was an immediate success,
and he consequently left journalism to devote himself to becoming “the best writer in the
world,” as he later told an interviewer from the Paris Review. García Márquez later won
international acclaim for his first novel, the modern classic One Hundred Years of
Solitude, in 1967. Subsequent novels such as Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and The
General in His Labyrinth (1989) established García Márquez as one of the most notable
writers of the twentieth century. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982.
García Márquez’s literary style draws heavily from European gothic writers such as Franz
Kafka, who famously turned his one of his characters, Gregor Samsa, into a giant insect
in “The Metamorphosis” (1915). American novelist William Faulkner has been cited as a
forerunner to García Márquez as well, especially in the way Faulkner grounds his highly
experimental novels in the grotesque details of a particular local culture. García
Márquez’s own development of the magical-realist genre has had enormous influence on
writers throughout the world, especially in Central and South America. In fact, magical
realism has since become one of the signature fictional genres of Latin American writers,
including Argentina’s Jorge Luis Borges, Chile’s Isabel Allende, and Peru’s Mario Vargas
Llosa.
In addition to writing, García Márquez has also served as one of Latin America’s most
distinguished diplomats and mediators. Although he’s never held any public office, he’s
worked tirelessly behind the scenes to mediate disputes between the government, leftist
guerillas, right-wing paramilitaries, and the drug cartels during Colombia’s decades-long
civil war. Friends with both Cuban leader Fidel Castro and former U.S. president Bill
Clinton, García Márquez also sought to bridge the gap between the two countries in the
1990s, which strengthened his reputation as a peacemaker. Many have hailed him as
Colombia’s only voice of reason and the country’s best hope for peace.
The almost cultish reverence for “Gabo,” as Colombians affectionately call him, has
transformed García Márquez into both a national and Latin American icon. Also known in
Colombia as El Maestro and Nuestro Nobel (our Nobel winner), he actually spends most
of every year living abroad in Mexico City, Havana, Paris, Barcelona, and Los Angeles,
where his son, Rodrigo Garcia, works as a Hollywood director.
Plot Overview
One day, while killing crabs during a rainstorm that has lasted for several days, Pelayo
discovers a homeless, disoriented old man in his courtyard who happens to have very
large wings. The old man is filthy and apparently senile, and speaks an unintelligible
language. After consulting a neighbor woman, Pelayo and his wife, Elisenda, conclude
that the old man must be an angel who had tried to come and take their sick child to
heaven. The neighbor woman tells Pelayo that he should club the angel to death, but
Pelayo and Elisenda take pity on their visitor, especially after their child recovers.
Pelayo and Elisenda keep the old man in their chicken coop, and he soon begins to attract
crowds of curious visitors. Father Gonzaga, the local priest, tells the people that the old
man is probably not an angel because he’s shabby and doesn’t speak Latin. Father
Gonzaga decides to ask his bishop for guidance.
Despite Father Gonzaga’s efforts, word of the old man’s existence soon spreads, and
pilgrims come from all over to seek advice and healing from him. One woman comes
because she’d been counting her heartbeats since childhood and couldn’t continue
counting. An insomniac visits because he claims that the stars in the night sky are too
noisy. The crowd eventually grows so large and disorderly with the sick and curious that
Elisenda begins to charge admission. For the most part, the old man ignores the people,
even when they pluck his feathers and throw stones at him to make him stand up. He
becomes enraged, however, when the visitors sear him with a branding iron to see
whether he’s still alive.
Father Gonzaga does his best to restrain the crowd, even as he waits for the Church’s
opinion on the old man. The crowd starts to disperse when a traveling freak show arrives
in the village. People flock to hear the story of the so-called spider woman, a woman
who’d been transformed into a giant tarantula with the head of a woman after she’d
disobeyed her parents. The sad tale of the spider woman is so popular that people quickly
forget the old man, who’d performed only a few pointless semimiracles for his pilgrims.
Pelayo and Elisenda have nevertheless grown quite wealthy from the admission fees
Elisenda had charged. Pelayo quits his job and builds a new, larger house. The old man
continues to stay with them, still in the chicken coop, for several years, as the little boy
grows older. When the chicken coop eventually collapses, the old man moves into the
adjacent shed, but he often wanders from room to room inside the house, much to
Elisenda’s annoyance.
Just when Pelayo and Elisenda are convinced that the old man will soon die, he begins to
regain his strength. His feathers grow back and he begins to sing sea chanteys (sailors’
songs) to himself at night. One day the old man stretches his wings and takes off into the
air, and Elisenda watches him disappear over the horizon.
Character List
The Old Man - An old man with wings who appears in Pelayo and Elisenda’s yard one
day. Filthy and bedraggled, the old man speaks a foreign language that no one can
understand. His wings and unintelligible language prompts some people to believe that
he’s a fallen angel and the church to believe he’s a Norwegian, even though he seems
oblivious to nearly everything that happens around him. By the end of the story, the old
man has recovered enough to fly away, exiting Pelayo’s and Elisenda’s lives as suddenly
as he’d entered.
Pelayo - Elisenda’s husband and the discoverer of the old man. Pelayo is an ordinary
villager, poor but grudgingly willing to shelter the winged old man in his chicken coop.
Pelayo guards the old man from harm, humbly consults the village priest, and has the
sense to resist the more extravagant advice he receives from the other villagers. Pelayo,
however, does not want to take care of the man indefinitely and doesn’t feel bad using the
old man to get rich.
Elisenda - Pelayo’s wife. Elisenda convinces Pelayo to charge villagers to see the old
man but later considers him to be a nuisance. A practical woman, she primarily concerns
herself with the welfare of Pelayo and their child and is therefore relieved when the old
man finally leaves.
Father Gonzaga - The village priest. As an authority figure in the community, Father
Gonzaga takes it upon himself to discern whether the old man is an angel as the
townsfolk believe or just a mortal who just happens to have wings. Father Gonzaga is
skeptical that the dirty old man could really be a messenger from heaven, but he dutifully
reports the event to his superiors in the church. As he waits for the Vatican’s reply, he
does his best to restrain the enthusiasm and credulousness of the crowd of onlookers.
The Neighbor Woman - Pelayo and Elisenda’s bossy neighbor. The supposedly wise
neighbor woman actually seems more like a silly know-it-all than a true counselor and is
the first to suggest that the old man is a crippled angel. She tells Pelayo to club the old
man to death to prevent him from taking Pelayo and Elisenda’s sick baby to heaven.
The Spider Woman - A freak-show attraction who visits the village. Punished for the
sin of disobeying her parents, the spider woman now has the body of an enormous spider
and the head of a sad young woman. The clear moral of the woman’s story draws
gawking villagers away from the old man, who is unable to offer the crowds such a
compelling narrative.
Analysis of Major Characters
The Old Man
The old man, with his human body and unexpected wings, appears to be neither fully
human nor fully surreal. On the one hand, the man seems human enough, surrounded as
he is by filth, disease, infirmity, and squalor. He has a human reaction to the people who
crowd around him and seek healing, remaining indifferent to their pleas and sometimes
not even acknowledging their existence. When the doctor examines him, he is amazed
that such an unhealthy man is still alive and is equally struck by how natural the old
man’s wings seem to be. Such an unsurprised reaction essentially brings the “angel”
down to earth, so any heavenly qualities the old man may have are completely obscured.
However, the narrator seems to take the old man’s angelhood for granted, speaking of the
“lunar dust” and “stellar parasites” on his wings, and the old man’s “consolation
miracles,” such as causing sunflowers to sprout from a leper’s sores, seem genuinely
supernatural. In the end, the old man’s true nature remains a mystery.
Pelayo
Although Pelayo is kinder to the old man than the other villagers, he is certainly no
paragon of compassion and charity. He doesn’t club the old man as the neighbor woman
suggests, but he does pen the supposed angel in his chicken coop and charge admission to
the crowds of curious sightseers. Pelayo is primarily concerned with his family and sick
child and is content to leave the theoretical and theological speculations to Father
Gonzaga. His decision to shelter the old man and take some responsibility for him,
however, suggests that he isn’t as cold or heartless as he might seem. By allowing the old
man to stay, Pelayo also invites mystery, wonder, and magic into his life.
Elisenda
Elisenda is a perfect match for her husband, Pelayo, being equally ordinary and
concerned with practical matters. If anything, Elisenda is the more practical of the two
because she suggests charging admission to see the “angel.” Despite the many material
advantages the old man brings, Elisenda’s attitude toward him is primarily one of
annoyance and exasperation. Once the old man’s usefulness as a roadside attraction
dwindles, Elisenda sees him only as a nuisance. Indeed, the old man becomes so
troublesome to her that she even refers to her new home—purchased with proceeds from
exhibiting the old man—as a “hell full of angels.” The old man becomes so ordinary in
Elisenda’s eyes that it isn’t until he finally flies away that she seems to see him for the
wonder he is. Elisenda watches him fly away with wistfulness, as if finally realizing that
something extraordinary has left her life forever.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
The Coexistence of Cruelty and Compassion
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” wryly examines the human response to those
who are weak, dependent, and different. There are moments of striking cruelty and
callousness throughout the story. After Elisenda and Pelayo’s child recovers from his
illness, for example, the parents decide to put the old man to sea on a raft with provisions
for three days rather than just killing him, a concession to the old man’s difficult situation
but hardly a kind act. Once they discover that they can profit from showcasing him,
however, Pelayo and Elisenda imprison him in a chicken coop outside, where strangers
pelt him with stones, gawk at him, and even burn him with a branding iron.
Amidst the callousness and exploitation, moments of compassion are few and far between,
although perhaps all the more significant for being so rare. Even though he is taken in
only grudgingly, the old man eventually becomes part of Pelayo and Elisenda’s household.
By the time the old man finally flies into the sunset, Elisenda, for all her fussing, sees him
go with a twinge of regret. And it is the old man’s extreme patience with the villagers that
ultimately transforms Pelayo’s and Elisenda’s lives. Seen in this light, the old man’s
refusal to leave might be interpreted as an act of compassion to help the impoverished
couple. García Márquez may have even intended to remind readers of the advice found in
Hebrews 13:2 in the Bible: “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have
entertained angels unawares.”
Motifs
Prosperity
Pelayo and Elisenda’s newfound prosperity is the physical manifestation of the magic and
wonder the old man brings to their lives. As the story opens, the couple lives in an almost
comical state of poverty as swarms of crabs invade their home. Even worse, their young
son is deathly ill. The old man, however, brings hundreds of pilgrims who don’t mind
paying Pelayo and Elisenda a small fee for the privilege of seeing him. The proceeds
bring Pelayo and Elisenda a new house, a new business, and more money than they know
how to spend. This remarkable turn in fortune happens so gradually that Pelayo and
Elisenda don’t really see how remarkable it is. Elisenda even refers to her new home as a
“hell full of angels” once the old man is allowed inside after the chicken coop collapses.
Symbols
Wings
Wings represent power, speed, and limitless freedom of motion. In the Christian tradition,
angels are often represented as beautiful winged figures, and García Márquez plays off of
this cultural symbolism because, ironically, the wings of the “angel” in the story convey
only a sense of age and disease. Although the old man’s wings may be dirty, bedraggled,
and bare, they are still magical enough to attract crowds of pilgrims and sightseers. When
the village doctor examines the old man, he notices how naturally the wings fit in with
the rest of his body. In fact, the doctor even wonders why everyone else doesn’t have
wings as well. The ultimate effect is to suggest that the old man is both natural and
supernatural at once, having the wings of a heavenly messenger but all the frailties of an
earthly creature.
The Spider Woman
The spider woman represents the fickleness with which many self-interested people
approach their own faith. After hearing of the “angel,” hundreds of villagers flock to
Pelayo’s house, motivated partly by faith but also to see him perform miracles—physical
evidence that their faith is justified. Not surprisingly, the old man’s reputation wanes
when he proves capable of performing only minor “consolation miracles.” Instead, the
spectators flock to the spider woman, who tells a heart-wrenching story with a clear,
easy-to-digest lesson in morality that contrasts sharply with the obscurity of the old man’s
existence and purpose. Although no less strange than the winged old man, the spider
woman is easier to understand and even pity. 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. García Márquez strongly suggests that the pilgrims’ result-oriented faith isn’t
really faith at all.
Magical Realism
García Márquez’s literary reputation is inseparable from the term magical realism, a
phrase that literary critics coined to describe the distinctive blend of fantasy and realism
in his and many other Latin American authors’ work. Magical-realist fiction consists of
mostly true-to-life narrative punctuated by moments of whimsical, often symbolic,
fantasy described in the same matter-of-fact tone. Magical realism has become such an
established form in Latin America partly because the style is strongly connected to the
folkloric storytelling that’s still popular in rural communities. The genre, therefore,
attempts to connect two traditions—the “low” folkloric and the “high” literary—into a
seamless whole that embraces the extremes of Latin American culture. As the worldwide
popularity of García Márquez’s writing testifies, it is a formula that resonates well with
readers around the world.
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” is one of the most well-known examples of the
magical realist style, combining the homely details of Pelayo and Elisenda’s life with
fantastic elements such as a flying man and a spider woman to create a tone of equal parts
local-color story and fairy tale. From the beginning of the story, García Márquez’s style
comes through in his unusual, almost fairy tale–like description of the relentless rain:
“The world had been sad since Tuesday.” There is a mingling of the fantastic and
ordinary in all the descriptions, including the swarms of crabs that invade Pelayo and
Elisenda’s home and the muddy sand of the beach that in the rainy grayness looks “like
powdered light.” It is in this strange, highly textured, dreamlike setting that the old
winged man appears, a living myth, who is nevertheless covered in lice and dressed in
rags.
Satire
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” functions as a satirical piece that mocks both
the Catholic Church and human nature in general. García Márquez criticizes the church
through Father Gonzaga’s superiors in Rome, who seem to be in no hurry to discover the
truth about the bedraggled, so-called angel. Instead, they ask Father Gonzaga to study the
old man’s unintelligible dialect to see whether it has any relation to Aramaic, the
language of Jesus. They also ask Gonzaga to determine how many times the old man can
fit on the head of a pin, another dig at Catholicism referencing an arcane medieval theory
once thought to prove God’s omnipotence. Their final conclusion that the old man with
wings may in fact be a stranded Norwegian sailor only makes the church sound absurdly
literal-minded and out of touch with even the most basic elements of reality. In the end,
the church’s wait-and-see tactic pays off when the old man simply flies away—a rib from
García Márquez implying that the “wisdom” of the church has never really been needed
at all.
Such criticisms of the church are only part of García Márquez’s critique of human beings
in general, who never seem to understand the greater significance of life. There is a
narrowness of vision that afflicts everyone from the wise neighbor woman, with her
unthinking know-it-all ways, to the kindly Father Gonzaga, who is desperate for a
procedure to follow, to the crowds of onlookers and pilgrims with their selfish concerns.
Elisenda too is more focused on keeping her kitchen and living room angel-free than on
considering the odd beauty of her unwelcome guest. She, however, seems to have a
moment of realization and almost of regret at the end of the story, when she watches the
old man disappear from her life forever. Just as the proverbial lost hiker who can’t see the
wilderness for the trees, García Márquez suggests that most people live their lives
unaware of their significance in the world.