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A Comparison Of Icarus And Angel's Death In Marquez

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Society is no less guilty of being indifferent to suffering. In the myth, Daedalus is being punished for a transgression against King Minos. His son Icarus is innocent of these crimes, but is banished to the Labyrinth just the same. The King does not care about the suffering of the innocent child. Queen Pasiphae attempts “in vain to gain his exoneration” but her pleas fall on deaf ears (Snodgrass 140). This is where she stops trying to intervene. She does not assist in their escape plan which makes her earlier efforts seem half hearted at best. After the escape and subsequent loss of Icarus, neither King Minos nor Queen Pasiphae are credited with feeling any sort of responsibility for the death of the child. More importantly, none of those who watched …show more content…

Think of the deep significance of this indifference.” This rings true in Marquez’s work as well. The townspeople in particular are impervious to the Old Man/Angel’s suffering. They torture him by throwing rocks, pulling out his feathers, and worst of all “they burned his side with an iron for branding steers”(274). Not one person steps forward to intervene on his behalf. For his part, the Old Man/Angel endures these torments with out rebuking or retaliating. It appears he is largely oblivious. Disoriented and confused, he allows himself to be chained up in the chicken coop.He is patiently biding his time until the crowds move on. The one person who should bring the crowds to heel is Father Gonzaga. As a priest in the Catholic church, he represents the moral authority in the story. Marquez uses him to drive home his message that not even the Church cares about suffering. He should intervene on the Old Man/Angel’s behalf. Instead he declares “the devil ha[s] a bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary”

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They intend to ignore him, but all of their neighbors are extremely nosy about who he is. They begin “making all kinds of conjectures concerning the captive’s future,” (2). They assume things without knowing anything about him. One of the characters, Father Gonzaga, judges him rather harshly saying that he “did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers,” (2) after he attempts to speak with him and he cannot understand his response. He does not give the angel a chance to prove himself.

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