Chan 1

Derek Chan

Ms. Padilla

English 10 Honors

February 9, 2012

A Very Surreal Story with Enormous Morals

In many myths, legends, and religious contexts, angels have appeared in the plot as

glorious creates in a musical realm, but in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ short story “A Very Old

Man With Enormous Wings”, the angel is portrayed as an old, ugly creature in a real world

setting, effecting the overall religious moral of the story. This winged-being’s appearance has

affected the significance of its creation by providing events that would most likely occur in our

real world if a so called “angel” where to appear. It shows the ugly truth of our world and how

we take things for granted, as the story goes to show how the people disrespect and treat the

special being with such impertinences, even when the angel is obviously heaven sent. This being

shown, it is clear that the author’s moral of the story was that God is always blessing, no matter

what we do.

Throughout much of the story, the angel has faced much abuse, and is treated like a

circus animal, as quoted in the second segment of the story (Marquez 588). When the priest paid

a visit and determined the creature an angel, the amount of people increased. Because of this

high amount of publicity, the owners of the land began to charge for admission to see the

creature, taking advantage of God’s gift. They proceeded to house the angel in the chicken coop,

which is in many ways discriminating and cruel to the creature, symbolizing the way people take

good things for granted.

Chan 2

Although there was a lot of mistreatment and abuse, the author goes on to give the plot

miraculous occurrences, one being the classical biblical miracle of healing. When the angel first

comes into the plot, the audience is already aware of the land owner’s sick infant baby. Soon

after the winged-creatures arrival, the infant is at full health again. Later in the plot, crowds of

people from all over the world come in search of the angel’s gift of healing (Marquez 591).

Gabriel Marquez writes these scenes with much similarity to the biblical stories of Jesus’

healing, where crowds gather to him to be healed. This relation shows how Marquez uses the

winged-creature to represent God’s grace and blessing in comparison to the Bible’s accounts of

Jesus being God’s form of grace and blessing.

In “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings”, the landowners make use of the angel’s

popularity by charging admission to see the creature. Through this, the family gains a lot of

profit and is blessed in riches. This occurrence of events is very similar to the biblical stories of

riches and wealth given to David by God in that Marquez uses the angel to represent the blessing

and the outcome being the surplus of money. In the story, the family with the angel had earned

enough money to stop working and to buy a mansion (Marquez 594), which clearly shows that

the angel was not just a showcased animal, but a miraculous God sent creature.

Even through the harsh treatment people gave to the creature in this story, Marquez

writes the outcome of the angel’s appearance to be a mighty blessing. Marquez writes the surreal

portions of the story almost synonymously to the biblical contexts of God’s miraculous

blessings. This goes to show that Marquez uses surrealism to bring forth the story’s moral of

God’s unconditional blessing and grace.

Chan 3

Work’s Cited

Gabriel Garcia Marquez,

A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Mark, Matthew, and John,

The Holy Bible: New International Version