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Derek Chan Ms. Padilla English 10 Honors February 9, 2012 A Very Surreal Story with Enormous Morals In many myths, legends, and religious contexts, angels have appeared in the plot as glorious creates in a musical realm, but in Gabriel Garcia Marquez short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, the angel is portrayed as an old, ugly creature in a real world setting, effecting the overall religious moral of the story. This winged-beings appearance has affected the significance of its creation by providing events that would most likely occur in our real world if a so called angel where to appear. It shows the ugly truth of our world and how we take things for granted, as the story goes to show how the people disrespect and treat the special being with such impertinences, even when the angel is obviously heaven sent. This being shown, it is clear that the authors moral of the story was that God is always blessing, no matter what we do. Throughout much of the story, the angel has faced much abuse, and is treated like a circus animal, as quoted in the second segment of the story (Marquez 588). When the priest paid a visit and determined the creature an angel, the amount of people increased. Because of this high amount of publicity, the owners of the land began to charge for admission to see the creature, taking advantage of Gods gift. They proceeded to house the angel in the chicken coop, which is in many ways discriminating and cruel to the creature, symbolizing the way people take good things for granted.

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Although there was a lot of mistreatment and abuse, the author goes on to give the plot miraculous occurrences, one being the classical biblical miracle of healing. When the angel first comes into the plot, the audience is already aware of the land owners sick infant baby. Soon after the winged-creatures arrival, the infant is at full health again. Later in the plot, crowds of people from all over the world come in search of the angels gift of healing (Marquez 591). Gabriel Marquez writes these scenes with much similarity to the biblical stories of Jesus healing, where crowds gather to him to be healed. This relation shows how Marquez uses the winged-creature to represent Gods grace and blessing in comparison to the Bibles accounts of Jesus being Gods form of grace and blessing. In A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, the landowners make use of the angels popularity by charging admission to see the creature. Through this, the family gains a lot of profit and is blessed in riches. This occurrence of events is very similar to the biblical stories of riches and wealth given to David by God in that Marquez uses the angel to represent the blessing and the outcome being the surplus of money. In the story, the family with the angel had earned enough money to stop working and to buy a mansion (Marquez 594), which clearly shows that the angel was not just a showcased animal, but a miraculous God sent creature. Even through the harsh treatment people gave to the creature in this story, Marquez writes the outcome of the angels appearance to be a mighty blessing. Marquez writes the surreal portions of the story almost synonymously to the biblical contexts of Gods miraculous blessings. This goes to show that Marquez uses surrealism to bring forth the storys moral of Gods unconditional blessing and grace.

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Works Cited Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Mark, Matthew, and John, The Holy Bible: New International Version