A VERY OLD MAN WITH

ENORMOUS WINGS
BY:GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ
 EXPOSITION:
One day, while killing crabs during a rainstorm that has lasted for several days, Pelayo
discovers a homeless, disoriented old man in his courtyard who happens to have very large
wings. The old man is filthy and apparently senile, and speaks an unintelligible language.
After consulting a neighbor woman, Pelayo and his wife, Elisenda, conclude that the old
man must be an angel who had tried to come and take their sick child to heaven. The
neighbor woman tells Pelayo that he should club the angel to death, but Pelayo and
Elisenda take pity on their visitor, especially after their child recovers.
Pelayo and Elisenda keep the old man in their chicken coop, and he soon begins to attract
crowds of curious visitors. Father Gonzaga, the local priest, tells the people that the old man
is probably not an angel because he’s shabby and doesn’t speak Latin. Father Gonzaga
decides to ask his bishop for guidance.
 RISING ACTION:
• Despite Father Gonzaga’s efforts, word of the old man’s existence soon spreads,
and pilgrims come from all over to seek advice and healing from him. One woman
comes because she’d been counting her heartbeats since childhood and couldn’t
continue counting. An insomniac visits because he claims that the stars in the
night sky are too noisy. The crowd eventually grows so large and disorderly with
the sick and curious that Elisenda begins to charge admission. For the most part,
the old man ignores the people, even when they pluck his feathers and throw
stones at him to make him stand up. He becomes enraged, however, when the
visitors sear him with a branding iron to see whether he’s still alive.
 CLIMAX:
• Father Gonzaga does his best to restrain the crowd, even as he waits
for the Church’s opinion on the old man. The crowd starts to
disperse when a traveling freak show arrives in the village. People
flock to hear the story of the so-called spider woman, a woman
who’d been transformed into a giant tarantula with the head of a
woman after she’d disobeyed her parents. The sad tale of the spider
woman is so popular that people quickly forget the old man, who’d
performed only a few pointless semimiracles for his pilgrims.
 FALLING ACTION:
• Pelayo and Elisenda have nevertheless grown quite wealthy from the admission fees
Elisenda had charged. Pelayo quits his job and builds a new, larger house. The old man
continues to stay with them, still in the chicken coop, for several years, as the little boy
grows older. When the chicken coop eventually collapses, the old man moves into the
adjacent shed, but he often wanders from room to room inside the house, much to
Elisenda’s annoyance
 DENOUEMENT
• Just when Pelayo and Elisenda are convinced that the old man will soon die, he begins to regain
his strength. His feathers grow back and he begins to sing sea chanteys (sailors’ songs) to himself
at night. One day the old man stretches his wings and takes off into the air, and Elisenda watches
him disappear over the horizon.