The very old man with enormous wings is an outsider in Gabriel García Márquez’s story of the same name. Misunderstood, rejected, and exploited by the community in which he as fallen, the very old man evokes curiosity, empathy, and confusion in the reader. Upon being discovered by Pelayo and Elisenda, the very old man is immediately labeled and conclusions are drawn about who he really is. The couple assume that he is a castaway from a ship that the storm wrecked, but the wise neighbor woman concludes that he is an angel, despite having no actual communication with the old man (Márquez 406). The townspeople agree that the old man is, in fact, an angel. The old man literally came from an outside place, and this aided in his classification as an outsider. After a while, however, they begin to find some discrepancies between this real, tangible “angel” and their previous notions about angels. …show more content…
Then he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the back side of his wings was strewn with parasites and his main feathers had been mistreated by terrestrial winds, and nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels,” (Márquez 406). Father Gonzaga denied this belief, saying that wings are not the defining mark of an angel, even suggesting that he was part of a ploy constructed by the Devil (Márquez 406). The priest rejected the very old man because to him, he was nothing more than an intelligible body with wings. He was an outsider in the priest’s mind because of