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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Summary

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As Audre Lorde once said, “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” This quote can be proven true in, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children” by Gabriel Garcìa Márquez. In this story, a couple named Pelayo and Elisenda find a peculiar old man with large wings, who appears very different from them, in the mud near their home. Their neighbor tells them that the old man is an angel, who is a fugitive survivor of a spiritual conspiracy. The neighbor believes that he should be clubbed to death, but instead the couple locks him in a chicken coop. News of the angel spreads and the wife charges the townspeople five cents to view the man. Later, they charge people less to view a girl with the body of a spider. The couple buys many nice things with the money that is raised. The following winter the angel becomes sick, but when the seasons change he grows stronger. He isolates himself to morph into a vulture-like creature who eventually flies away. Gabriel Garcìa Márquez depicts how people treat others with disrespect when they look different from themselves in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children,” by showing how poorly people treated the old man. …show more content…
They are unsure what to do with him, so they ask their neighbor for advice. The neighbor claims he is an angel and believes he is a fugitive. Although the old man looks different from them, they cannot bring themselves to kill him. To protect themselves, “Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with a bailiff’s club, and before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the chicken wire coop” (1). The couple shows no respect or hospitality toward the old man. When they locked him in a chicken coop it shows how evil they

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