At the beginning, it had been raining for 3 days and crabs were everywhere.

Pelayo and Elisenda's

child was supposedly sick because of the crabs' stench. An old sickly man is found on the shore with
enormous wings. When the couple attempts to communicate with the old man, his incomprehensible
language (which is never identified) leads the couple to believe he is a castaway. A neighbor woman
who knew everything about life and death tells the couple he is an angel. Pelayo decides to lock the
angel in a chicken coop overnight and then send him on a raft to his fate. Early the next morning the
local priest, Father Gonzaga, comes to the home, followed by the rest of the community, to test the
old man and determine whether or not he truly is an angel. Ultimately, Father Gonzaga finds many
reasons why the man cannot be an angel, such as the fact that the old man cannot understand Latin,
and also because he has too many mortal characteristics. Elisenda, tired of cleaning up the visitors'
messes, decides to charge an entrance fee of 5 cents to see the angel, which eventually allows them
to amass a fortune.
The crowd soon loses interest in the angel because another freak has risen to fame. The new
attraction is a woman who disobeyed her parents when she was young, and has since been
transformed into a tarantula. In order for her to continue telling her story, the people of the town toss
meatballs into her mouth, which was "her only means of nourishment." Though the people of the
town no longer see the angel, the family had saved up enough money to build a mansion with
balconies and gardens and nets. The angel's health declines, and it seems he is on the verge of
death. When his last winter in the chicken coop is over, he suddenly becomes more healthy and
grows a few new feathers. At first, he roams around the house, but Elisenda keeps shooing him out of
the rooms with a broom. One day he leaves the house and begins to fly away
Magical Realism = 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 Pelayos 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 mans 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 Elisendas 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
mans extreme patience with the villagers that ultimately transforms Pelayos and Elisendas lives.
Seen in this light, the old mans refusal to leave might be interpreted as an act of compassion to help
the impoverished couple. Garca Mrquez 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 Elisendas 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 dont 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 dont 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 Garca Mrquez 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 mans 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 doesnt 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 Pelayos house, motivated partly
by faith but also to see him perform miraclesphysical evidence that their faith is justified. Not
surprisingly, the old mans reputation wanes when he proves capable of performing only minor
consolation miracles. Instead, the spectators flock to the spider woman, who tells a heartwrenching story with a clear, easy-to-digest lesson in morality that contrasts sharply with the
obscurity of the old mans 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, cant match her appeal,even though some suspect that he came from the heavens.
Mrquez strongly suggests that the pilgrims result-oriented faith isnt really faith at all.
Satire
1. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at
him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end
found him familiar.
Pelayo and Elisendas initial impression of the old mans wings as the filthy limbs of a scavenger
rather than the glorious wings of an angel is a good example of how Garca Mrquez grounds even his
most fantastic elements in the grunginess of daily life. The second sentence in particular clues
readers in to one of the central elements of magical-realist fictionreawakening readers sense of
wonder at their own world. Garca Mrquez suggests that if people can become inured to the
presence of a winged man in a story, then they can just as easily overlook the wonders and little
miracles of real life. A story such as A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is meant to serve as a
reminder that everyday life is filled with great mysteries and wonders that people overlook too often.
2. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that
completely human organism that he couldnt understand why other men didnt have them too.
When both the old man and Pelayo and Elisendas son come down with chicken pox, the local
physician takes advantage of the opportunity to examine the angel physically. The doctor is
surprised both that the old man is still alive and that his wings seem so natural on his body. In this
passage, Garca Mrquez seems to imply that there is nothing angelic about the old man at all,
although the narrator goes back to referring to him simply as the angel a few lines later. More
important, the passage suggests that the boundary we draw between natural and supernatural is
arbitrary at best. Garca Mrquez subtly raises the question: if wings are so naturally a part of this
particular mans body, then are we the freaks for not having them?
The Old Man
The Old Man is "Dreaming" in the story. He first appears in the backyard in the mud. The family is first
hesitant about what he is, so they make him live in the chicken coop. He is very dirty and he speaks
an incomprehensible language that no one understands. When the crowds first start to come around,
he is absentminded and patient about what's going on. The crowds come from all over the world to

see him so he becomes a celebrity. Later, the crowds burn him with a branding iron and he flaps his
wings in pain. In the end, he grows all of his feathers back and he flies away.
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 mans 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 mans angelhood for granted, speaking of the
lunar dust and stellar parasites on his wings, and the old mans consolation miracles, such as
causing sunflowers to sprout from a lepers sores, seem genuinely supernatural. In the end, the old
mans true nature remains a mystery.