In his short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez shares with his audience a satire that aims to provoke thought regarding human nature through the use of his preferred genre: magical realism. The ambiguity in the supernatural characters, the old man and the spider lady, paints a world that combines elements of reality and fantasy to form major aspects of this genre. Marquez offers an explanation: suffering is a result of human interaction, that callousness and cruelty is part of our nature. It is in our nature to be self-serving, cruel, and unfeeling towards each other and to condemn anything that strays from what we expect. The story focuses on the negative treatment of the supernatural winged old man by humans. …show more content…
The ill old man sat in the appalling habitat, and the onlookers just stared at him for the fulfillment of their own entertainment, not caring for a single second about the old man or his wellbeing. In fact, no character in the entire story is particularly caring about the old ragged man imprisoned in the chicken coop and dressed as a “ragpicker” (Marquez 289). Marquez exemplifies the folly that humans represent; we are superficial beings, focusing only on the presentation of the old man. Marquez satirizes how shallow humans are, reflecting on how our society prioritizes the appearance and presentation of the object more than what the object actually is and what it does ; in this case, the old man’s identity, history, and purpose. If the old man was clean, dressed in white, and spoke the language the “holy language” of the church, the onlookers would be far more likely to revere him as an angel than to execrate him