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Gabriel García Márquez's A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

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The short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel García Márquez is about a family in Rome who is visited by an Angel in the middle of a stormy night. Pelayo and Elisenda, parents of a newborn child that has become very ill, find that the next morning after finding the Angel their child’s illness has vanished. Not knowing what to do with the Angel, they shove him in their chicken coop, charging every villager who wants to see the mythical creature five cents. The human perception of the supernatural in life can be confused with not knowing how to deal with the unexplained.
Often throughout the story Father Gonzaga does not refer to the angel as an angel, and that all starts from their first encounter, “he noticed that seen close up he was much too human: he had an unbearable smell of the outdoors, the …show more content…

Some of the villagers believe he is an angel, and like Father Gonzaga he has his suspicions. However, in the end of the story Elisenda “went to the window and caught the angel in his first attempts at flight.” (Márquez 322) This old man with wings that was once described as “dressed like a ragpicker” with “buzzard wings” is now an angel with “feathers of a scarecrow.” (Márquez 317-322)
The supernatural in the short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” plays an important role to the main characters. This concept shows how these characters perceive the unexplainable which is true and real, because not many people would invite an angel in to their house. They would react like Pelayo and Elisenda, locking him up outside of their house so they can figure out what to do. The supernatural and human perception go hand in hand in Gabriel García Márquez short

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