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Old Man with Enormous Wings

In: English and Literature

Submitted By linalovebug
Words 847
Pages 4
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Questions: 1. The title was an indicator of the story being about something fantastical because old men, or any men don’t usually have wings in real life. Marquez’s play on words and the imagery with which he writes with is very detailed. Like the way he describes something so mundane like the beach saying that it “had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish.”(352) Right from the first paragraph of the story where we meet the old man with the enormous wings was when I realized that it was a fantasy. In the first sentence of the story, Marquez describes the rain saying “On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs…” (351) I think the second sentence is his whimsical way of saying that it had been raining for a while. Later in the story we see more elements that indicate this story as a fantasy for instance, the woman who was turned into a spider for disobeying her parents or the “leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers.” (355)

2. The old man with the enormous wings represents an Angel; however, the family was skeptical as to whether he was even an Angel at all. The family thought that he was a pretender or maybe even the Devil and they treated him like an animal. He became a carnival act that the family made money off of. It seemed like when the family was in need, he showed up and even though they became wealthy because of the man with enormous wings, they don’t see him as someone who helped them reach that level of fortune. The wife, Elisenda saw him as an annoyance more than anything. The timing of when the angel arrived is a bit coincidental to me. Maybe the reason that he was in such bad shape was a revelation of the loss in faith of society’s spirituality. Being the “flesh and blood” angel, he shows both the good and bad side of humanity. The sick child was the only one that ever treated the “angel” with any

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