Through the short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez combines reality with myth. The husband and wife are very real and their surroundings are vividly described. The old man, on the other hand, is mysterious and intriguing. The reader never learns if the old man is really human or something else. Pelayo and Elisenda never know if he is good or bad. Is he an angel or a devil. It doesn’t really matter to them because he eventually brings them good fortune. They make a lot of money from people coming to see him. In return, they allow him to stay but don’t really do anything to help him. In the end he just flies away. We never know why he came in the first place or why he leaves. The story makes me wonder if it was luck that he came and helped the family in need or just an accident. This story got me thinking about different people react to a stranger. Here some people thought the old man was an angel and others thought he was a devil. Maybe it just depended on what the person wanted to see. I’m not sure if I liked the story or not. I liked the detailed description of the setting, but found the story slightly confusing.
Questions
(1) Was the old man’s arrival and departure connected to the needs of the child? For example, the child was sick when he arrived and then start to grow up as healthy child when he left.
(2) What characteristic about the old man was so interesting to the people in the town? Was it the wings or the fact that he was so old or something else?
(3) Why didn’t the family share the profits with the old man or use some of the money to take care of him?
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