Man Being An Angel example essay topic

Angel In the story "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez a man named Pelayo is taking crabs to throw into the sea when returning he finds a man with wings. He then runs to tell his wife of this and in turn they both tell their neighbor who "knew everything about life and death" (Marquez 84). It was not until the neighbor came that the thought of this man being an angel was even introduced into the story. The thought that this thing was an angel is inconclusive since the only evidence given for this conclusion is that it had wings. The fact of whether or not this creature is an angel is never really stated in the story.

From what I gathered from the text Iam not sure myself. The part that makes this so hard to believe that this is an angel is that it has no real reason to be there. The only information added in to the story that comes even close to being a viable reason for this to bean "angel" is that the child of Pelayo is sick and so they think that he is thereto take the child from them. When the three had come to the conclusion tha the was an angel of death their first reaction was to kill the man. This can bethought of as society's usual impulse of automatically wanting to destroy the strange or unfamiliar instead of trying to learn from it. Luckily for the man, Pelayo can not bring himself to kill him, this inability to kill the man leads me to believe that Pelayo is the representation of kindness and compassion in this story.

This compassion is seen again later when he allows the old man to live in their shed even after he had stopped bringing in money for the family. Pelayo locking the man in the chicken coop is the major problematic point in the story, it sets up all of the events that happens to the family and the man after the initial meeting. After the "angel" is locked up word of him spreads like wild fire and soon everyone in town was coming to see the man. This flocking of people coming to see the man included Father Gonzaga the local priest. When Father Gonzaga arrived he enters the chicken coop in order to examine the specimen more closely. As he entered the coop he said good morning to the angel in "Latin, the language of God", (Marquez 86) when the angel made no response is when the first suspicions that he really was not an angel but merle some strange man were brought into play.

The story then presents more evidence to this fact in that the angel has too qualities such as an unbearable smell of the out doors and he was also covered in parasites. On the other hand this is also the point in the story where I feel that the strongest argument for the creature being an angel can be made. Thought is not as an angel of death but as a guardian angel because it says almost immediately after he is locked up that the boy recovers from his ailment. Then later when the family makes money off of people coming to see the angel this is something that helps the family by making them able to buy netting and keep out the crabs. This was truly a blessing for them because in the text it is said that the smell of all the dead crabs is what is thought to be the cause of the child's fever in the beginning.

The next thing that came to me as I read this story is that maybe everything that goes on in the story is just a total representation of society and how we sometimes over look the good things in life. This is seen when the people slowly started to stop coming to see him and is made final when a circus comes through and the people all go to see a spider woman. Also when what were thought to be miracles that the angel had preformed were looked at by the people the realized that they were not miracles at all. Several of these were a blind man who grew three new teeth also a leper who's sores sprouted sunflowers.

After the people had decided that this was not all they wanted it to be they immediately forgot about it. This is something that is seen in society all the time when something new and great comes along everyone wants to see it but as soon as they have something better to see they forget about the first. It is just like a child with a new toy for the first day, its the greatest thing in the world then come the next week all they can think of is the other toys in the store. A while after the people stop coming to seethe angel even Pelayo and Elisenda begin to forget about him, the only thing that reminds them that he is even there is the smell from the chicken coop. Another factor that leads me to this conclusion is that in the beginning of the story Pelayo and Elisenda both had a great fear of this angel thinking that it might be there to take the child away but as the story progresses they let their kid view him and eventually even go into the chicken coop and play. The only reason that I can see for them to lose their fear of the man is that they decide for themselves that though he is not a regular man he is not an angel.

At this point in the story Gabriel removes the man from the chicken coop saying that it rusted and finally fell apart. So now with nothing to confine the man he merle ambles around the house becoming more of a nuisance then any sort of threat. He is found in every room of their home and so as a courtesy to the man instead of just throwing him out the compassionate Pelayo allow him to stay in their shed through the winter. During this time in the shed he gets a fever, making more of a case for him to be a man than an angel. After his recovery he begins to grow new feathers; he makes sure to hide them so that no one will notice and when he is strong enough he tries to fly away and I think that this is the final point in the story that shows how society forgets about most things. Since Elisenda sees him do this but as he leaves she does not think of him as a nuisance but just some imaginary thing.