"A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings"

Gabriel Garcia Marques uses irony by demolishing our expectations of a beautiful and debonair angel by, instead, illustrating the old, bald, and featherless angel sent to Peloya and Elisenda. We expect Peloya and Elisenda, a very poor and overworked couple, to accept the dishevelled angel despite his appearance because he is able to preform miracles and cure their sick son; but they sell his mutant wings for profit to their community. The townspeople, and even the Parish priest, are deceived by their eyes, and are unable to look past the angel’s appearance to see him for what he really is. Marquez uses irony in his short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” to show us how we judge and categorize people without knowing their true character. 

            Upon receiving an angel, Peloya and Elisenda are unable to see past the angel’s appearance and see the miracles he can deliver because he does not fit their conventional idea of what an angel should look like. Marquez sets up his story by giving a poor couple an angel who cures their sick son. But, rather than praise the angel for the wonders he has done they exile him to the chicken coop to be victim to the chickens, the weather, and the visitors. The angel’s “few faded hairs… [And] few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather” blind Peloya and Elisenda (p. 1). Marquez sets the tone of the story by giving an angel to the one couple that needs a miracle, and destroys our expectations for the couple, we are supposed to pity, as they sell the angel’s ironic appearance for profit.

            The townspeople use their physical expectations of an angel to judge, and when those expectations are letdown they treat the angel with utmost severity. Marquez shows us the community’s disappointment as their confusion leads to complete disarray and causes them to react with violence towards the angel. Marquez ironizes the story as “cripples pulled out feathers to touch their defective parts with, and even the most merciful threw stones at him” (p. 2). He is showing us that even the people who should be the most empathetic towards the angel participate in the torture.

            But the most ironic part in the story is when the Parish priest deems the angel ungodly. The role of the priest, in a heavily catholically influenced society, is to stand for everything just and moral. He is supposed to be the one who finds the broken and damned and see the light in them and then brighten this light by showing them to Jesus. But in Marquez’s story he “[has] his first suspicion of an imposter when he [sees] that he [does] not understand the language of God” (p. 2). The Parish priest goes against what he stands for by denying the old man’s angelic truly nature because he did not pass one test; he did not understand the sophisticated language of the Catholic Church.

            Marquez then further blinds the townspeople by making them completely unresponsive to the miracles the angel preforms. The angel is attributed to “the blind man who didn't recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn't get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers” (p.3). The angel does wonders in these people’s lives but never gets any recognition because he didn’t fix their biggest problems. Marquez is toying with our expectations of an angel swooping in and fixing all of our most potent problems, so as soon as the angel fixes only minor problems he is no longer considered supernatural. These weak miracles are seen as useless and unwanted because the blind man, the paralytic, and the leper did not even want them because the gifts were not nearly enough. We see a community of people who are so enveloped in the deformity of his wings that the only positive characteristic he is ever given is his amazing ability to be patient through the torture and lack of recognition and credit. 

            Ultimately, the very old man with enormous wings is able to endure the winter, grow his feathers back, and fly away proving himself an angel. In the very last line, Peloya “kept watching him… and she kept watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him, because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life.” Peloya is proven completely wrong when the very old man takes flight, instead of being regretful or ashamed in the way she had treated him she is glad to see him go because only then was he “no longer an annoyance in her life.” Marquez sets up this last opportunity for Peloya to prove that she is not heartless, but instead she is glad to see him go because he was no longer a burden.

            Marquez writes this story to show us how quick we are to judge others strictly on physical appearance. He is making us more aware to us that we have been hardwired to judge and categorize people from the instant we meet them; even those of us who are the parish priest, the ones who have the reputation of not being able to say a bad word about another still fall victim to this. By doing this we are choosing to ignore their true character and denying people the room to grow and become someone different because we will forever see them in one light. Marquez uses our insight into the angel’s miracles to ask us what we are ignoring or not seeing from the people in our own lives.