A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

In "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” author Gabriel Garcia Marquez calls into question the typical idea of what an angel should be. When a very old man is found laying in the mud of the courtyard of Pelayo and Elisenda they take him to be nothing more than a ship wrecked sailor despite the vulture-like wings upon his back. Their neighbor, however, is quick to tell them that he is in fact an angel. When word spreads, curious people surround the “angel.”

The angel, however, is nothing like what the people would expect from a heavenly being. The conventional angel has wings that are white and majestic, is young and beautiful, speaks Latin and is to be held in awe. This poor sight is nothing like what an angel ought to be.

The reason for Marquez’s altered angel is to make the reader wonder why an angel must be so majestic. People have a mental picture of what an angel should look like but would they think anything less of a being if it did not have this conventional beauty? References to Jesus, thought by many to be the Son of God, show him as looking like nothing more than a man when he was on earth. He did not have a magnificent outward appearance that left people astonished.

Beauty holds great importance to people only when it is seen on the outside. People magazine wouldn’t top a list of the world’s most beautiful people with Mother Theresa. We value that which captures our eye like the maiden that was turned into a spider in the story.

Marquez is making the point that if angels are not that which we imagine them to be we will not hold them in such high regard. Similarly, the conventional appearance of an alien is a “little green man.” Since we assume this is what they look like, if we were to find a meteor that held an alien that looked just like a mosquito we would be disappointed. Perhaps, as Marquez suggests angels are much closer in appearance to ourselves than we would like to know.

The subtitle “A Tale for Children” is very important in showing what Marquez means to reflect in his story. Parents give their children a sugar-coated view on what the world is and so they picture the world as a generally happy and loving place. Only when they grow up do these children see the painful, harsh world as it is. Marquez is suggesting that we have a sugar-coated view of angels and we would be unwilling to see them as anything less than beautiful godly creatures. Without the beautiful outward appearance that we hope for they may become nothing more than a short-lived circus act.