A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

    First off, I really enjoyed reading this short story with my group. It got our brains working and thinking because the questions we had to answer were challenging but helped us understood the story more. This story of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, tells a story of an old man who appeared out of nowhere and was discovered by a couple named Pelayo and Elisenda who had a sick child. This couple was confused and was not sure what to do with this old man so they put him under the chicken coop. Everyone in town was watching the old man like a circus, people were throwing stuff at him and treating him badly. Despite the people not treating him well, he still stayed. He was considered an angel but people still did not respect him because of his appearance and he does not appear to look like anyone else. In our group, we have discussed how magical realism in the story is used to convey societal values by using real-life examples and the way people interact with things that are unfamiliar to them. They were comparing the man to an angel because he has wings. When they brought the priest to speak to him they automatically assumed he was from the devil because he didn't speak back to him in a language that he understood. He was misunderstood and people treated him like an animal because they didn't understand him. The wings were used as a symbol in the story to show that he was a miracle, he showed patience while people were still mistreating him. He didn't fly away until he decided to in the end until the kid was older and healthy. The departure at the end of the story was that his work was finished, I believe that he might have been here for a mission and to bring awareness to how others act. The “angel” knew it was his time to fly away, he hid the feathers that had grown and when everything was complete “mission” he left. Overall the author is trying to show how people are self-centered, they don't care, and they are ungrateful and judgmental towards others who are different from them.