Gabriel Marquez's A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Society can be a smooth talker, it can slyly belittle someone until they fit the stereotype society has placed upon them. Some people are willing to sever past the constant bigotry and persevere towards the person they want to become, but others get stuck and fall into the trap called the pigeonhole. The line separating those who ignore society’s harsh accusations and those who listen are classified directly with how the targets react towards discrimination. Ifemelu, the main character from Americanah by Chimamanda Adichie, was a Nigerian women that lived in America who received an abundant amount of discrimination towards her African race and accent. Within a short story by Gabriel Marquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, people treated

The old man forcibly occupied a chicken coop with hens because Pelayo, the land owner, instructed him to. Quickly, word traveled across the neighborhood that an apparent angel was upon them and they decided to pay him a visit, “...they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest verence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.” Despite being treated like a circus animal, the angel went on with his daily routine, ignoring the intruders, “He was lying in the corner drying his open wings in the sunlight among the fruit peels and breakfast leftovers that the early risers had thrown him.” The old man did not seem moved in any manner by the townspeople because he did not acknowledge them except to eat the food they had thrown to him and even then he payed attention to the food not the people. He could have easily become outraged with the lack of human respect being offered to him and started yelling and cursing the crowd, yet he did no such thing, instead he did what he needed to accomplish without paying attention to the disrespectful crowd