A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Literary Analysis

Gabriel Garcia Marquez authors the short story “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” where she writes about a family’s encounter with a supernatural being. Pelayo and Elisenda, the family in Marquez’s story, come across a strange old man who has angel-like wings. Throughout the story, Pelayo and Elisenda struggle with what to do with the man and debate whether he is an angel. Two literary lens that can be applied when reading “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” are Psychoanalytical theory and Marxist theory. Psychoanalytical theory analyzes the behaviors of people towards each other and aspects of the conscious and unconscious mind. Marxist theory analyzes the classes that are placed in a relationship between groups of people in society. Although

According to the author of “Sigmund Freud”, Sam McLeod, “the id is operated at an unconscious level according to the pleasure principle.” The Id is shown through Elisenda, mother of the family, who flaunts and revels in the coming of new money by “[building] a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens” (3) and buying “many dresses of iridescent silk,” (3). McLeod points out that the “ego follows the reality principle as it operates in both the conscious and unconscious mind”(Sigmund Freud). The ego is shown through the using of the old man to gain money for the family’s new house and dresses. The family begins to charge the crowd to see the old man and is soon, “[filling] their walls with money”(3). McLeod states that the “superego operates on the morality principle and motivates us to behave in a socially responsible and acceptable manner.” The superego is shown by Marquez’s inserted side story about the “woman who had been changed into a spider for having disobeyed her parents” (3). All aspects of Freud’s psychic apparatus are presented in Marquez’s story, thus showing the possible application of the Psychoanalytical theory in “A Very Old Man with Enormous