Gabriel Garcia Marquez: a Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

“He’s an angel,” she told them. “He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”” This is a quote comes from the short story, A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The story itself is very intriguing; however it is science fiction. It is about an old, strange man who is apparently sick and beat up with large wings on his back. He falls into this town where this couple takes him in and leaves him in a chicken coop. As soon as he gets better he flies away and the story ends. Although it may seem like there is no reasoning behind this story it does have a theme. Also, with it being science fiction, the credibility the author demonstrates in the story is well put. The theme of the story is not directly pointed out but what I got from it was that, no matter who a person is or what they might look like, if they need help, people should always chose to help. The man with enormous wings came into that couples life for a reason, to help there sick new born and to bring their happiness alive again. They took him in even though he was treated as a circus animal they did not kill him or leave him abandoned.

As soon as he got better he flew away and the people in the town were once again happy. I believe he was just what they needed, an angel, a symbol, a miracle, something to bring joy to them again. Moreover, the author’s use of words and realism to the fiction story enhanced his credibility. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings demonstrates Marquez’s ability to tell a fairy tale or folk tale in a realistic manner while incorporating the magic of the angel.” (Tillburg). As the story goes on, readers are still wondering if the old man is an angel or some sort of creature. Marquez has a gift of leaving the audience guessing by never really saying what kind of creature this old man is. Also, the reader is still left with the thought of where he came from and where did he go when he flew away. What makes a good writer is catching the audience’s attention and leaving them with unanswered questions so that they could figure it out themselves on what the theme really was. He explains the man with wings in great detail and everything else in the story seems to have sense of details.

The short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings has all of the literary elements such as setting, plot, point of view. However the ones that stuck out most to me is theme and his credibility. “None of this power would exist, of course, if Garcia Marquez were not a considerable artist. Literary artists make us see things, and differently from the way we have ever seen them before; they make us see things their way” (Epstein). This quote from an article explains Marquez as a literary artist because he writes in a different style that happens to be realistic and fiction at the same time.

Works Cited

Tillburg, Elizabeth V. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Magical Realism.” Your Home Page Goes Here. All Collected Short Stories Gabriel G. Marquez, 1 Mar. 2012. Web. 02 Mar. 2012. <http://mockingbird.creighton.edu/ncw/marquez.htm>.

Epstein, Joseph. “How Good Is Gabriel Garcia Marquez?” Commentary 75.5 (May 1983): 59-65. Rpt. in Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Jean C. Stine and Bridget Broderick. Vol. 27. Detroit: Gale Research, 1984. Literature Resource Center. Web. 2 Mar. 2012.