Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"

Point of View: Third Person, Past Tense Characters: **The Angel** – a helpless old angel on the verge of dieing who is kept in a chicken coop by a man named Pelayo who makes a profit off admission to see the creature **Pelayo** – the keeper of the angel, married to Elisenda, keeps the angel in a chicken coop **Elisenda** – Pelayo’s wife, the last person to see the angel, and see him fly away **Child** – Elisenda and Pelayo’s kid, thought to be the reason the angel went to the house **Father Gonzaga** – the local priest, one of the first to attempt to one-on-one communicate with the Angel


 * __Vocab__**
 * Impeded:** to interfere with or slow the progress of
 * Incomprehensible:** impossible to comprehend
 * Ingenuous**: obsolete
 * Bayonets:** a steel blade attached at the muzzle end of a shoulder arm (as a rifle) and used in hand-to-hand combat
 * Proliferated:** to cause to increase in number or extent as if by [|proliferating]
 * Infamies:** evil reputation brought about by something grossly criminal, shocking, or brutal

Plot: A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings is about a winged man who appears to be supernatural falls down to earth. One day, when a man named Palayo was going to throw a group of crabs they caught in the house back in the ocean, he comes across a strange creature lying face down in the mud in his courtyard. The creature has enormous wings, and appears to be an old man. He calls over his neighbors and they think that it is a fallen angel who had been coming for the new born child, but the recent storm knocked him down to earth. They send for the local priest to see if this is true. While they are waiting, they lock the “angel” in there chicken coup. Word starts to get around that they have an angel held captive, and there is soon a large crowd of people. They try and get attention from it, but the angel is patient and ignores them all. The only time they get a reaction from him is by poking him with a branding iron. The priest shows up at the house and examines the angel. He says he doesn’t think it’s an angel because it’s so dirty and it doesn’t speak Latin. People start to lose interest in the angel because a carnival comes to town with other strange creatures. By now the angel has lost almost all of its feathers and has no energy. Palayo and his wife start to think its dying and let it stay in the shed for the winter. At the end of winter, the angel starts to grow its feathers again and eventually flies away to never be seen again.

Setting and Theme: The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings The setting of this story takes place in and around Pelayo’s house which is by the sea/ocean. It also takes place in the street that he lives on because a circus comes by. The themes of the story are patience and tolerance, treat things nicely or they will disappear, don’t judge things by the way they look, and clash with religion. Patience and tolerance play a part in this story because the “angel” was very patient of the people even though they weren’t the same way with him. Treating things nicely or they will disappear is a reoccurring theme in many children’s tales including things one. The people were not nice and did not take care of the “angel” so in the end he disappears/ flies away. Another common theme in children’s stories