A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Summary
The short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ tells the story of Pelayo and his wife Elisenda, who find an old man with wings in their courtyard after killing crabs in a rainstorm. Pelayo gets his wife, and they try to communicate with him unsuccessfully. They eventually get their neighbour woman, who informs them that the old man is an angel. She tells them that it was on its way for their sick child.
They put the angel in the chicken coop, and during the middle of the night, their child’s fever breaks. They decide to let him go, but when they return to the courtyard at dawn the entire community has arrived to see the angel. Father Gonzaga soon arrives, declaring that the old man is a fake. He promises to get the real truth from the higher courts of the church. The news of the angel spreads like wildfire, and the courtyard soon resembles a marketplace. Elisenda then has the idea of charging a 5 cent admission fee for seeing the angel; they are soon rich. Rome takes its time deciding on whether the old man is an angel, and while waiting for their verdict, Father Gonzaga works desperately to restrain the crowd.
The crowd leaves on its own, however, when a carnival boasting a Spider-Girl arrives in town. Spectators are allowed to question her, and she tells them how she was turned into a tarantula one night for disobeying her parents. This appeals to the masses more than an old winged man who ignores the people around him. Thus, the curious crowds soon leave the angel for the spider, leaving Pelayo’s courtyard deserted.
Pelayo and Elisenda build a mansion with all the money they have accumulated. They neglect the angel and prevent their child from getting too close to the chicken coop. He soon becomes a part of their life, and they no longer fear him. The child visits him often. After a while, the chicken coop breaks, and they allow him to move around their house, although it causes Elisenda much distress. He gets increasingly frail and sickly, and they fear that he will die. He recovers, however, and one- day Elisenda watches him fly away, to her great relief.
Main Theme
One of the masterpieces of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ carries the theme such as – doubt, ambiguity and the problem of interpretation. Likewise, the story also presents how the cunning people take the unnecessary advantage of common people’s gullibility. In addition to this, the story perfectly delivers the human greed, love for materialism and increasing selfish nature of human beings at the present time.
A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Exercises
Understanding the Text
a. How does the narrator describe the weather and its effects in the exposition of the story?
Ans.: The first paragraph of the story describes the weather and its effects in the exposition of the story. The story paragraph begins with the statement that it had been raining for three days. The courtyard was drenched. The world had been sad since Tuesday. Sea and sky were a single ash-grey thing and the sands of the beach, which on March nights glimmered like. powdered light, had become a stew of mud and rotten shellfish. The light was so weak at noon that when Pelayo was coming back to the house after throwing away the crabs, it was hard for him to see what was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard. Thus, we can something unusual is going to happen. state that the weather was rainy with dark clouds and it generally in a story indicates that something unusual going to happen.
b.Describe the strange old man as Pelayo and his wife first encounter within their courtyard. Ans.: The old man was very old. He was lying face down in the mud and he couldn’t get up impeded by his enormous wings. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left, on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. He spoke in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice.
c. Why did Pelayo and Elisenda imprison the old man in the chicken coop?
Ans.: Pelayo watched over the old man with enormous wings all afternoon from the kitchen and before going to bed, he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop. But in the middle of the night, Pelayo and Elisinda came to know that their child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous and decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days and leave him to his fate on the high seas.
d.Why was Father Gonzaga not sure about the old man being a celestial messenger?
Ans.: Father Gonzaga went to the old man and said good morning to him in Latin but the angel, i.e. the very old man with enormous wings didn’t understand it. So, Father Gonzaga labelled the old man as an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers. Because of this reason, Father Gonzaga was not sure about the old man being a celestial messenger.
e.Many people gathered at Palayo’s house to see the strange old man. Why do you think the crowd assembled to see him?
Ans.: Many people gathered at Pelayo’s house to see the strange old man. I think the crowd assembled to see him. The man was very old and had enormous wings attached to his body. In fact, such a sight would definitely be a strange thing to behold for anybody. Because of this reason, I reckon, the crowd assembled to see the very old man with enormous wings.
f.Some miracles happen while the crowd gathers to see the strange man. What are these miracles? Narrate them.
Ans.: Some miracles that happened while the crowd gathered to see the strange man are:
The blind man didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth,
The paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and
The leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers.
g.State the irritating things that the people did with the strange old man.
Ans.: When the crowd gathered to see the strange old man, they carried out some irritating things to him. The crowd threw the stones at the old man with enormous wings trying to get him to rise so they could see him standing. Likewise, they too burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he has been motionless for many hours that they thought he was dead. This leads him to pain and tears in his eyes. These are some irritating things that the people did with the strange old man.
h.How and why was the woman changed into a spider ?
Ans.: When the woman was still practically a child, she had sneaked out of her parent’s house to go to a dance, and while she was coming back through the woods after having danced all night without permission, a fearful thunderclap rent the sky in tow and through the crack was changed into a spider. came the lightning bolt of brimstone that changed her into a spider. In this way, the woman was changed into a spider.
The woman was changed into a spider because she disobeyed her parents.
i.Describe how Elisenda saw the strange man flying over the houses.
Ans.: One morning, Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind that seemed to come from the high seas blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and saw the angel in his first attempts at flight. They were so clumsy that his fingernails opened a furrow in the vegetable patch and he was on the point of knocking the shed down with the ungainly flapping that slipped on the light and couldn’t get a grip on the air. But he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses, holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture. She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions and she kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him because then he was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.
Reference to the context
a.The arrival of a strange old man at Palayo’s courtyard arouses many suspicions and explanations. Explain how the neighbour woman, Father Gonzaga and the doctor speak of the strange man. Why do you think these three people give three different kinds of interpretations?
Ans.: The neighbour woman after observing the very old man with enormous wings stated that he was an angel and he had been coming for the child, but the poor fellow was so old that the rain knocked him down. Similarly, Father Gonzaga arrived before seven o’clock the next morning, when he heard the strange news. Father Gonzaga went to the old man and said good morning to him in Latin but the angel didn’t understand it. So, Father Gonzaga labelled the old man as an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of sure about the old man being a celestial messenger. God or know how to greet His ministers. Because of this reason, Father Gonzaga was not sure about oldman being celestial messenger.
Nevertheless, he promised to write a letter to his bishop so that the latter would write his from the highest courts. primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts.
Likewise, the doctor after examining the child of Pelayo listened to the angel’s heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have them too.
These three people gave three different kinds of interpretations because they were from different fields and they had the knowledge of their own fields, therefore they gave the interpretations of the angel from their own perspectives.
b.This story belongs to the genre of ‘magical realism’, a genre perfected by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novels and short stories. Magical realism is a narrative technique in which the story-teller narrates the common place things with magical colour and the events look both magical and real at the same time. Collect five magic realist happenings from the story and argue why they seem magical to you.
Ans.: Any five magic realist happenings from the story and my arguments regarding why they seem magical to me have been presented as follows:
Magic realist happenings in the story
-the very old man with enormous wings
-a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers
-a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him
-a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake
-the woman who was changed into a spider for disobeying her parents and later again changed into the woman
Why they seem magical to me
-No man with the wings in the world does exist.
-We haven’t heard about such sort of woman. This shows that either she is magical or a lunatic.
-We haven’t heard about such sort of man too. This too shows that either he is magical or lunatic.
-This too seems unbelievable.
-A human being cannot change into a spider and vice versa.
c.The author introduces the episode of a woman who became a spider for having disobeyed her parents. This episode at once shifts people’s concentration from the strange old man to the spider woman. What do you think is the purpose of the author to bring this shift in the story?
Ans.: The central character of the story is the very old man with enormous wings and the story moves to his periphery from its beginning to end. However, in the middle of the story, the plot of the story seems to shift the reader’s concentration from the very old man with enormous wings to the spider woman. In my opinion, the author does show in order to make the story more interesting. The sole mention of the old man in the story would lead the reader into monotony. Not only this, with the help of this shift, the writer does like to show in his story that the people of the modern time are not attracted to only one thing for a long time and their taste changes along with the change of the time and events. Likewise, with the shift, the author wants to make us inform that the people in the world get appealed with the cunning skill of other people (as of the spider woman) who can gullible people with their own unbelievable self-exaggeration, rather than something that is really wonderful.
d.The story deals with the common people’s gullibility. How do Palayo and his wife take advantage of common people’s whim ?
Ans.: Gullibility is an act or quality of being easily deceived or tricked by others. In simple words, gullibility refers to the act of believing everything that other people say without having a simple judgment over it.
In the story, Pelayo and his wife when found the old man with enormous wings in their backyard, they charged five cents admission to see the angel to each person. Pelayo and Elisenda were happy though tired, for in less than a week, they had crammed their rooms with money and the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter still reached beyond horizon. In fact, it was the money collected because of common people’s gullibility since Pelayo and his wife had invested neither the money nor the effort for the angel that came into their house. And, the common people were so gullible that they paid the fee to look at the angel for Pelayo and Elisenda. Thus, Pelayo and his wife, Elisenda took advantage of common people’s whim.
Reference beyond the text
a.An irresistible crowd queues at Pelayo’s house for many days simply to look at the strange old man. Narrate an episode from your experience or from another story where people assemble in crowds, not for any noble cause.
Ans.: In our village, a road was being constructed and the topography of the construction site was a hilly area. And, for the construction of the road, a bulldozer was being used. So, a huge crowd comprising almost the whole village went there, simply to observe the construction of the road. The crowd was such huge that it became difficult for bulldozer operators to construct the road.
The bulldozer operator time and again requested the crowd to stay far from the place where the road was being constructed, however, the village was ignorant and didn’t obey him. Eventually, the bulldozer operator and the manager of the construction company requested the administration for help regarding the management of the crowd as the huge crowd nearby the construction area affected the pace of construction work. But, they didn’t get immediate support from there too. The bulldozer operator and the manager of the construction company time and again requested the crowd of the people to stay away from the construction site but all in vain. The crowd of people rather than staying away from the construction site went close and watched the construction of the road risking their life. And, one day, a disastrous incident took place. During the construction of the road when the bulldozer was in operation in scratching the hill to make the road, a large stone rolled down from there to the place where there was a crowd watching the construction of the road. Unfortunately, the stone hit a 10-year child leading to her death on the spot. This shocked all the villagers and the news received nationwide attention. The construction of the work was halted for a week. And, later the construction of road restarted, however, there were no people to watch the construction of the road this time.
2.The taste of children is different from grown-ups. What are the elements in the story that make “The Old Man with Enormous Wings’ a children’s story?
Ans.: Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote the story ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ in 1955, and gave it the subtitle of ‘A Tale for Children’. This leads us to believe that this story is indeed literature intended for children. And the story does have a sort of children’s story feel to it. We can argue that this story is a children’s story (though it seems children story it is much more an adult’s story embedding a magical realism and intending a great satire). We can argue that the story is truly a children’s story since the presentation, style and elements of the story are in the form of a children’s story. In addition to this, the story embeds fantasy ad magic – which interests children rather than the grown-ups. The children who treat this story consider the magic elements of this story ordinarily as in the other stories (but adults have different perspectives). Likewise, the mention of an angel, i.e. the old man with enormous wings, the spider woman who turned into a spider for disobeying her parents at her young age and vice versa, etc. depict that this story is a children’s story to a great deal. In contrary to this, the story can greatly be argued as an adult’s story. The magical elements in the story are not similar to ordinary children tales with happy and sweet tuning, for example, the old angel in this story is not beautiful, powerful and divine as in other ordinary children’s stories. Likewise, the spider woman’s story seems to be fake rather than being real. Though the story with the element of magical realism presents the magic as an ordinary element and makes us feel that the story carries ordinary magic as do other stories for children. However, the story in contrast to ordinary children’s magical stories, avoid the naïve moral judgment and a happy ending and instead creates a complex and problematic world free of any moral lessons or maxims and the story to great extent appears to be magical and real at the same time.