A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

• Written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Characters:
  • Pelayo
  • Elisenda
  • A strange old man with wings
  • A neighbor woman
  • Father Gonzaga
  • Spider-turned woman
  • A doctor
• Theme: human nature-related curiosity, greed and cruelty

A Detailed Summary

This story, written by a Columbian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, is a magical realist story which examines the human response to those who are weak, dependent, and different. The story shows human-related curiosity, greed and cruelty.

One rainy day Pelayo kills crabs brought by rain into his house, and in order to get rid of the stench he goes out in the rain to throw the dead crabs away into the sea. While returning, nearby his house he sees a strange old man with wings lying on the ground and struggling to get up. He calls his wife Elisenda and both watch him in surprise. When they try to speak to him, he answers in an incomprehensible language. They ignore his wings and conclude that he is a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm. They call a neighbor woman who is known to know everything about life and death, and seeing his wings she tells them that he is an angel who must have been knocked down by rain.

Pelayo drags him into the wire chicken coop and locks him up with the hens. Since Pelayo and Elisenda’s sick child becomes well afterwards, they feel magnanimous, and so they put water and food into the coop for the angel. Soon the whole neighborhood knows about the flesh-and-blood angel held captive in Pelayo’s house, and they come to see him. But they don’t treat him as a supernatural creature, but rather a circus animal. The wise men of village also visit him and they make all kinds of conjectures about him. Finally, Father Gonzaga arrives and examines him. He enters the chicken coop and greets the angel in Latin. Since the old man doesn’t seem to understand Latin, the language of God, and also when observed closely he looked more human than an angel, Father Gonzaga casts doubt and warns the people against the tricks of the devil. Nevertheless, he promises to write to the bishop who will write to the Pope to get the final verdict from the highest courts.

The news of the captive angel spreads rapidly and a huge crowd of people come to see him from near and far away. Many invalids also come in the hope of getting healed with the touch of the angel. Elisenda comes up with an idea of fencing in the yard and charging an admission fee to see the angel. Doing so, in less than a week, they are able to earn a lot of money. But then, slowly the people begin to lose interest in the old man for his wings are not those of an angel but, rather, those of a bat. And also, he eats nothing the pilgrims bring to him, but only eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seems to be patience, for no matter how much he is poked and tortured by the curious visitors, he sits motionless. Moreover, the healing and miracles do not happen. Rather, strange things happen like the blind man instead of recovering his sight grows three new teeth and the leper’s sores sprout sunflowers. The angel’s reputation thus declines. It gets crushed completely when a spider woman arrives in the town. She is a frightful tarantula the size of a ram and with the head of a sad maiden. She talks to the people and recounts the details of her misfortune. She tells them that when she was a child she got changed into a spider for not taking her parents’ permission to go to a dance one night. She eats meatballs offered by her visitors. Since she entertains, interacts, and teaches a fearful lesson, all the people are attracted to her and nobody cares the old man anymore now. Pelayo’s courtyard becomes empty once again.

With the money Pelayo and Elisenda have saved, they build two-story building house and begin to live comfortably. Pelayo’s child also grows up and begins to enter the chicken coop to play with the old man. When the child and the old man together catch chicken pox, a doctor comes and cures the boy but about the old man he says that it seems impossible for him to live. However, the old man survives. Over time, he grows new wings and one day he flies away as Elisenda watches him with a sigh of relief from her kitchen window.

Magical Realism in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”

Magical Realism is a literary style in fiction where magical elements are added to realistic events and actions. Being so, it blurs the line between fantasy and reality. In the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” everything is ordinary and feels commonplace as it is in real world, except the old man with enormous wings and the spider-turned woman.