Critical Views of Gabriel (Jose) Garcia Marquez’
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”
Faulkner (1999) | Janes (1994)

Faulkner, Tom.  “An Overview of ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.’”  Exploring Short Stories.  Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.  Rpt. Gale Database: Literature Resource Center, 1999.

[Faulkner explores the peculiar effects of magic realism as a literary style employed in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.”]

The style of writing called magic realism is marked by its imaginative content, vivid effects, and lingering mystery. In combining fantastic elements with realistic details, a writer like García Márquez can create a fictional world where the miraculous and the everyday live side-by-sidewhere fact and illusion, science and folklore, history and dream, seem equally real, and are often hard to distinguish. The form clearly allows writers to stretch the limits of possibility, and to be richly inventive; however, it involves more than the creation of attractive fantasies. The village in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” may be appealing in some ways, but it is also a complex, difficult, even disturbing fantasy. Beyond imagination, the successful creation of such a world in the reader's mind requires skillful use of the same tools and techniques familiar in more conventional, less magical types of fiction.

In the character of the bird-man, we can see this style at work, and experience the charming (but unsettling) effect it often has on readers. His mysterious nature is the story's central problem, the source of its energy and tension. We know, of course, that human beings don't have wings; logically, such a character must be either a monster or a miracle if he exists at all. Yet when the doctor examines the old man, what most impresses him is the logic of his wings, which seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn't understand why other men didn't have them too. Logic and science insist that such a creature must be supernatural, but García Márquez presents him as entirely natural; much like the doctor, once we've seen him, it's as if winged old men were common, even unremarkable, visitors. We see how, despite the inconvenience of the wings, Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. As readers, we are guided to the same kind of acceptance. No one questions the old man's existence, or the reality of his wings, not even the narrator  (except, perhaps, in the final line, when the old man becomes an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea). He may or may not be an angel, but he is unquestionably an old man with wings, as real as anyone else in the story.

Several techniques contribute to the old man's vivid existence. Detailed sensory imagery is a standard means for writers to reinforce a character's reality to the reader, and García Márquez not only makes us see the old man (right down to the few faded hairs left on his bald skull and the parasites picking through his ruined feathers), but also smell him, feel the texture of his wings, and hear his whistling heartbeat. The rich imagery also works to undermine supernatural stereotypes, contradicting our usual ideas about angels and denying the old man any of the heroic or exalted qualities we expect. He is described not only in human, earthly terms, but in terms of extreme weakness and poverty (dressed like a ragpicker, his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather). When he is compared to birds, they are not exotic eagles or dazzling peacocks, but common species with less-than-noble reputations (his buzzard wings, a decrepit hen, a senile vulture). As Father Gonzaga observes (and by the author's design), nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels. He thus becomes real the more we see him as human, a creature closer to our own experience and understandingnot a shining, mythical being but a frail, suffering, even pathetic fellow, who happens to have a few physical quirks.

The problem García Márquez presents us is not just What if angels were real? but What if they were real, and nothing like we expect them to be? He creates a tension between the old man's magical and human qualities, leaving us unable to fit the character into a comfortable mental category. The old man is far too human and decrepit to match our cultural image of angels: perfect, powerful, majestic, immortal. Nor does he appear to be a heavenly messenger, sent by God as a sign of momentous changes; his presence seems to be purely an accident of the weather, without purpose or meaning. Nonetheless, he certainly has his magical qualities, and is even credited with miracles (though, like everything else about him, they are disturbing, and fail to satisfy expectations). However miraculous his nature, origins, or abilities may be, he is stranded here, and relatively powerlessan exile from his former life, at the mercy of strangers. The villagers must somehow account for him, and because no one understands his language, he is unable (and apparently unwilling) to explain himself. Several possible interpretations arise, but most of them are clearly absurd, telling us more about the villagers' superstitions and beliefs than about the old man's true nature. They are rendered with playful humor, ensuring that the reader will appreciate the irrational and illusory basis of such folk wisdom. Yet our superior, conventional methods of logic and reason don't seem any more useful in reaching a secure explanation. The old man remains a stubborn, intriguing mystery, both magical and ordinary, impossible to decipher but undeniably there.

This uncertainty (or ambiguity) applies not just to the old man, but evidently to life itself, as it is lived in this timeless, nameless village. It seems to be a place where just about anything can happen (for example, a young woman can be changed into a spider for disobeying her parents)or at least, it is a place where everyone is quite willing to believe such things happen, and to act as though they do happen. This impression is partly a result of García Márquez's use of narrative voice. For the most part, the story seems to be told by the standard omniscient observer of third-person fictiona narrator who knows all the necessary facts, and can be trusted to present them reliably. When such narration expresses an opinion, the reader tends to accept it as a correct interpretation. This narrator may seem to fit the type at first, but later appears to change his point of view, and even his opinions of events. The narrator seems to endorse the villagers' thinking at times (for example, reporting without comment that the old man has a strong sailor's voice, even though we have no evidence for this assumption of Pelayo and Elisenda's), but at other times, he seems almost contemptuous of their irrational ideas. (A few lines later, when he describes how the couple skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently decided that he was nothing but a sailor, the intent seems to be strongly sarcastic.) We might entertain hope that Father Gonzaga's correspondence with church leaders will eventually produce an explanation until the narrator comments that those meager letters might have come and gone until the end of time without result. In such ways, readers come to rely on the narrator for clues about how to take elements in the story that may be unclear. But this narrator seems determined to be untrustworthy, and leaves us uncertain about important events. Without telling us how, he treats everything that happens as though it makes sense. Though he is habitually ironic in his view of the wise villagers' beliefs, he describes the supernatural experience of the spider-woman in simple factual terms, seeming to accept it as readily as his characters do. Are we to conclude that this fantastic transformation from human to spider actually happened? Or that the narrator is now as deluded as the villagers? Or even that he is purposely lying to us? At such moments, the narration seems to parody the style of traditional fairy tales; as the label magic realism suggests, some elements of the story seem meant to be approached with the simplistic logic of fantasy, while others are depicted with all the complexity and imperfection that mark real life.

García Márquez not only combines realistic details with fantastic ones, but seems to give them both equal weight, an equal claim to reality or truth in the reader's mind. Dreamlike, poetic descriptions are presented matter-of-factly; like winged old men who fall from the sky, they are treated more as everyday realities than as bizarre impossibilities. When we learn that a character is deprived of sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him, it seems to be merely a symptom quoted from his medical chart, perhaps even a common cause of insomnia, not an obvious delusion or a feat of supernatural hearing. As in the similar case of the poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers, the narrator gives no indication that any particular explanation is required, almost assuming that the reader will accept these odd riddles without question. Traditionally, we aren't meant to take such language literally (as a description of factual events), but poetically (or figuratively), as a creative key to some idea or state of mind, which we must interpret for ourselves. (The insomniac, for example, might be said to really be experiencing hallucinations due to mental illness, or perhaps a feeling of isolation and insignificance in the cosmos but not actually listening to stars.) But here, such magical descriptions seem to be offered as straightforward accounts of normal (if rare and unusual) occurrences (his ears are sensitive, and those stars are just too loud!) events whose real meaning need not, or cannot, be determined, but which must nonetheless be accepted as real.

The mixture of different kinds of imagery, and different narrative attitudes, serves to heighten the reader's uncertainty. Realistic and magical descriptions are often combined, as if they are inseparable aspects of the same events. Thus, we are not only told that it is the third day of rain, but also, a few lines later, that [t]he world had been sad since Tuesday. By combining factual and imaginative descriptions, and seeming to treat them with equal credibility, the author suggests that both ways of knowing are valid, perhaps even necessary to achieving a balanced understanding. Magic seems to lie just beneath the surface of the story, waiting to break through, almost beyond the narrator's control. For example, a description of the old man's undignified captivity lingers over factual, everyday details (his diet of eggplant mush, the crowd tossing stones to get him to react, the hens pecking through his feathers); but the insects infesting his wings are suddenly described as stellar parasitesa poetic image, not a factual one (at least until there is any evidence of insects living on stars). If we approach the story expecting to be charmed by a fairy tale, the factual descriptions seem too real; they spoil the magical effect we hope for, by allowing the unpleasant and inconvenient details of everyday life to intrude on our imaginative landscape. But if we read with a realistic frame of mind, looking for solid facts and logical explanations, the strange poetic images only frustrate us, and may cause us to question other apparent facts. The magical touches may dazzle us, but they can also make us feel like the old man in his early efforts to fly: that we are slipp[ing] on the light, unable to get a grip on the air. We must somehow accept the events our narrator presents (at least temporarily), in order to continue reading at all, and have any hope of making sense of the tale. But we are never sure whether to accept them as real events, mass hallucinations, symbolic stand-ins for some other story the author has in mind, or the unreal magic of legends and fairy tales. We cannot choose between reality and magic; García Márquez insists on giving us both, even in the most minor details. When the startled bird-man suddenly flaps his wings, he creates a whirlwind in the courtyard, with a dustcloud composed of both (earthly) chicken dung and (heavenly) lunar dust: even the dirt on the ground is shown to be both humble and marvelous at once.

Typical of the style, this story's tone seems both playful and serious. The striking images and sudden surprises stimulate the reader's senses and imagination, but also frustrate and complicate our efforts to fix a definite meaning to events. Works of magic realism are both praised and criticized for their childlike wonder, their depiction of a world of almost-infinite possibilities, where the supernatural and the everyday take on the same vivid intensity. But they are not fairy tales or two-dimensional fantasies; they offer no clear lessons, simple events, or sharp distinctions between reality and magic. Wondering includes both delight and confusion, the struggle to comprehend experiences that challenge our understanding, and don't fit our accustomed map of reality. Far more things are possible in the world of magic realism, including miracles, contradictions, and logical impossibilities but this also means that more meanings are possible, and that all meanings will be elusive and uncertain.

Janes, Regina.  “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: Overview.”  Reference Guide to Short Fiction.  Ed.  Noelle Watson, St. James Press, 1994.  Rpt. Gale Database: Literature Resource Center, 1999.

Written between his first major novels, Cien años de soledad (One Hundred Years of Solitude) and El otoño del patriarca (The Autumn of the Patriarch), "Un señor muy viejo con alas enormes" ("A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings") is one of two stories the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez designated "A Tale for Children." (The other is "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.") The author has never explained the heading, but both stories have at their center a fantastic person who enters, briefly, a more realistic world and transforms it in unexpected ways. Stylistically, the stories belong to the magic realism of the first part of One Hundred Years of Solitude, a world of wonders, where marvelous happenings are both impossible and innocent. Collected with La increíble y triste historia de la Cándida Eréndira  (Innocent Eréndira), the two "tales for children" bring to an end the epic style of One Hundred Years of Solitude as García Márquez freed himself to develop the narrative voices of The Autumn of the Patriarch.

While "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" is obviously a study of the power for good of illusion (or delusion), the point or moral of "A Very Old Man" is considerably less clear, wherein resides its moral. Like its protagonist, the story provokes and resists moralizing interpretation. The very simple narrative line is complicated by details either comically insignificant or resonant with social and political implications: the reader must decide which, when, and what signifies. Closure is provided by autobiographical elements familiar from García Márquez's other work, and at the story's heart is the invention of a wackily reimagined angel, an invention that reinvents others' visions.

"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" starts in the sad, muddy, poor, yet still iridescent world of the Caribbean litoral, as a couple cope with crabs, rain, and the threatening sickness of their new born child. On the third day, in the mud of the courtyard, Pelayo the husband finds an old man, groaning face down in the mud, unable to rise because he is impeded by his enormous wings. After the wings, the reader's second surprise is the de-romanticization or de-sentimentalization of the angel. This "drenched great-grandfather" with wings is no angel as art has represented angels to us. His buzzard wings have parasites; he has few hairs and fewer teeth, and he stinks. To the townsfolk, as to the reader, he immediately presents a problem of interpretation: what is he? how should he be treated?

Thereafter, the angel's story follows a simple trajectory through the townsfolks' response to him. An initially brutal response to a stranger--club him to death, lock him in the chicken coop, put him on a raft with three-days' provisions--is replaced by celebrity, as others crowd to see him. Is he a supernatural creature or a circus animal? (Here an allegory of the successful artist or the imagination steps in.) Should he be mayor of the world, a five-star general, or an occasion for eugenics?  (Here politics and social engineering insert themselves). The priest has doubts and suspicions, but no powerful alternative interpretation: he consults authority, without success. (Religion, its good intentions, and its futility make a bow.) From nowhere, unexplained, unsummoned, troops with fixed bayonets disperse the mob gathered at Elisenda's house. (The brutal force, usually invisible, that keeps the social order intact and possesses actual, not theoretical power, makes a fleeting appearance.) Sick, he raves like an old Norwegian. (García Márquez reminds us again that the Norse first discovered America from the west, the initial discovery having come from the east.) As the parentheses indicate, the townsfolks' multiple interpretations and the narrative's odd details spin off in different directions. The story of the angel is intrinsically coherent, but meaningless: he comes and he goes, yet just as the oddity of the angel impels the townsfolk to interpret, so the oddity of the story impels the reader to repeat their activity, interpreting them as well as the angel.

The desire for coherent interpretation, for narratives that "make sense," is worked through in the passing of the angel's celebrity. Eventually, the town's attention shifts from an indifferent, perverse angel who does not speak to them, to a more satisfying and interpretable story, the moral tale of the girl who was changed into a spider--a tarantula the size of a ram--for disobeying her parents. (Like Eréndira, in Innocent Eréndira and Her Heartless Grandmother, the metamorphosed girl had earlier appeared in One Hundred Years of Solitude.) Her story has a clear and useful meaning readily applied in daily life: honor your father and mother, or at least obey them, and do not go out dancing all night. The angel, however, does not work like that. He is irreducible and irascible and useless. He may be allegorized, but the allegorization is not he.

The story ends many years later when the angel's wings grow back and he flies away. The child he saves (or fails to take away) marks the passage of time, and the angel himself is a battered old man, a figure traceable to the author's grandfather. Such a figure, familiar from La horarasca ("Leafstorm"), El coronel no tiene quien le escriba (No One Writes to the Colonel), and One Hundred Years of Solitude, would appear transformed yet again in The Autumn of the Patriarch and, later still, as Bolívar in El general en su labertino (The General in His Labyrinth). The angel's last years as nuisance evoke the senile grandmother (Ursula in One Hundred Years of Solitude, "she" in "Bitterness for Three Sleepwalkers").

Save that his departure has something to do with the wind from the sea  (inspiration? exile? freedom?) and his arrival coincided with the recovery of the sick baby, we do not know where the angel came from or where he is going. He may reflect or incarnate the irritation of a successful author (or his inarticulate, unprotected novel, speaking only its own language) poked at and branded, scolded and suspected, accused of not having a clear and proper moral (a frequent complaint made in Latin America against One Hundred Years of Solitude when it appeared in 1967). He may be a scrap that did not make it into that novel (where his opposite number the Wandering Jew appears and Remedios the Beauty rises into the heavens with sheets for wings): what would happen if an angel came to town, and what would an angel really look like? An image around which interpretation laps and breaks, the old angel argues the superiority of the image (and the imagination) to interpretive apparatus, while he illustrates the irresistible need to interpret.

Sources:

Critical Views of Gabriel (Jose) Garcia Marquez’ “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”:

Faulkner, Tom.  “An Overview of ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.’”  Exploring Short Stories.  Detroit: Gale Research, 1998.  Rpt. Gale Database: Literature Resource Center, 1999.

Janes, Regina.  “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: Overview.”  Reference Guide to Short Fiction.  Ed.  Noelle Watson, St. James Press, 1994.  Rpt. Gale Database: Literature Resource Center, 1999.

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