Response to A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

Response to A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings

   This is a short story wrote by Marquez and his stories are always strange and hard to understand. This one is about an old man with enormous wings and Pelayo’s families. Pelayo thinks this old man is an angel, but they do not treat this man friendly. All the people here just show curious about a stranger. Because of this angel, Pelayo earns a lot of money. 

   From my point of view, the aim of this story is to criticize society. From the beginning of this story, it writes, “on the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house”. This reminds me of the Bible. The god uses flood to kill human beings. And then, the angel comes. However, people’s reaction towards this angel is strange. At first, they are scared of him, but in the end, they just treat him as a tool of entertaining. The story describes that the old man looks sick and is badly injured, instead of healing him; people choose to play on the angel. I think Marquez uses irony to describe the situation. This reflects people's numbness and shows no sympathy to strangers. I think Marquez wants to change this society so he wrote this story.