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| Neb English Support Class 12 |
Section 2: Literature (Short Stories)
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Summary | Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
MAIN INTRODUCTION
GLOSSARY OF THE TEXT
compress (v.): squeeze or press
stupor (n.): a state in which a person’s thoughts are not clear e.g., drunken stupor, feverish stupor
castaway (n.): ashore as a survivor of a shipwreck
celestial (adj.): belonging or relating to the heaven
magnanimous (adj.): a generous or forgiving towards enemies or less powerful rivals
reverence (n.): deep respect for someone or something
conjecture (n.): an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information
catechism (n.): religious instruction, especially in Roman catholic
decrepit (adj.): ruined because of age or neglect
impertinence (n.): lack of respect
antiquarian (adj.): relating to the antiques (old and rare things)
imposter (n.): a person who pretends to be someone else
ingenuous (adj.): innocent and unsuspecting
Supreme Pontiff (n.): The Pope (Roman Catholic)
befuddled (adj.): utterly confused
sacramental (adj.): related to Christian religious ceremony
pentinent (n.): person who repents of a sin
cataclysm (n.): a large scale and violent event in natural or cultural history
Aramaic (n.): a language
providential (adj.): occurring to a favorable time
tribulation (n.): a state of great trouble
outlandish (adj.): that looks or sounds unfamiliar
thunderclap (n.): a crash of thunder
creolin (n.): a kind of disinfectant
myrrh (n.): a fragrant gum resin obtained from certain trees and used, especially in perfumery, medicines, and incense
standoffish (adj.): unfriendly
exasperate (v.): irritate/worsen
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Name: Gabriel José GarcÃa Márquez
Birth: 6th March 1927
Birth Place: Aracataca, Colombia
Nationality: Colombian
Genre: Novels, short stories
Death: 17 April 2014 (aged 87) Mexico City, Mexico
Notable Works:
One Hundred Years of Solitude
The Autumn of the Patriarch
Love in the Time of Cholera
Chronicle of a Death Foretold
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ABOUT THE STORY
"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" is a magical realist story that was written by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
The story was initially published in the Spanish language in 1955.
Later, the story was written in the English language in the year 1968 and published in May–June 1968. The work was published in English in the New American Review 13 in 1971. This story appeared in the 1972 book "Leaf Storm and Other Stories".
The short story involves a strange character who appears in a family's backyard on a stormy night. What follows are the reactions of the people in a family, a town and outside places. The story falls within the genre of magic realism.
MAIN THEME OF THE STORY
"A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings" examines the human response to those who are weak, dependent and different. The story shows human nature-related curiosity, greed and cruelty as its major themes.
Apart from these themes, we find other themes such as faith, suffering and the supernatural.
MAIN CHARACTERS
1. The Old Man:
The old man has enormous wings and communicates in an unknown language that nobody understands. He is too weak and dirty in his appearance. He becomes a celebrity, and crowds come from different places to see him. In the end, his feathers grow back and he flies away.
2. Pelayo:
Pelayo is Elisenda's husband and the father of a child. He protects the elderly winged man and shelters him.
3. Elisenda:
She is the wife of Pelayo and charges fees from visitors to see the old man.
4. Father Gonzaga:
He is the local priest in the community. He suspects the old man is a devil figure because he doesn't know Latin, the language of God. He then reports the occasion to his superiors in the church and awaits a verdict from a higher authority.
5. The child:
Pelayo and Elisenda's newborn child. We know so little about this kid that we barely even know if it's a boy or a girl (boy).
6. The neighbour:
She is the woman who assists both Pelayo and Elisenda explaining the old man with wings. She is quite superstitious. She thinks that she knows a lot about life and death. When Pelayo and Elisenda find the old man, they call her to examine the old man. She refers the old man as an angel who came for the child but is too old and weak to do his job. Her explanation is somewhat mixed with both superstition and traditional beliefs.
7. The Spider Woman:
The spider woman is transformed into a tarantula with the head of a woman, comes into a freak show and visits the village.
SETTING OF STORY
MORAL OF THE STORY
▪︎ We should not be rude to others, especially to those who are different from us.
▪︎ We should let things run in their natural course; don't bring conflict.
▪︎ Humanity goes beyond other aspects.
DETAILED SUMMARY
At the beginning of the story, the narrator describes the weather and acts of two major characters.
In the very first scene, we find both characters, Pelayo and his wife Elisenda, cleaning the crabs from their house. After three days of rainfall, their house was full of crabs, which caused a horrible smell in the entire house. They thought that due to that stench, their newborn baby suffered from fever.
After throwing crabs into the sea, when Pelayo returned, he saw a very old, weak man with wings lying face down in the mud within his courtyard. He became quite frightened and startled to see that old man. The old man was unable to get up properly. A bit later, Pelayo hurriedly went to his wife and informed her about that old man. Both examined the old man shockingly. The old man seemed very dirty with his ragged clothes. They stared at him and his enormous wings. They found him in a very pitiable condition, with a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth. His huge wings were entangled in the mud. Soon, they overcome their surprise. Both tried to speak to him, but the old man answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice.
They concluded that the old man was a castaway from a shipwreck. When they called a neighbour woman, she referred to the old man as an angel who came there for their child.
The next day, when everyone knew about the old man, Pelayo watched him all afternoon through his kitchen and decided to chain him up and keep him with the hens in the wire chicken coop. They had a fear about their child.
In the middle of the night, when the rain stopped, their child woke up without a fever and desired to eat. Both Pelayo and his wife Elisenda felt magnanimous and desired to send the old man out to sea on a raft with food and water for three days and leave him in his fate on the high seas. However, when they went out to their courtyard at the first light of dawn, they saw a mass of people gathered around the chicken coop to see the angel. They started harassing the old man by treating him like a circus animal instead of a supernatural creature.
The priest, Father Gonzaga, was alarmed at the strange news and arrived before seven in Pelayo's house. During that time, onlookers were making various hypotheses about the captive old angel.
The simplest among them thought that he should be named mayor of the world. Others of sterner minds felt that he should be promoted to the rank of five-star general in order to win all wars. Some visionaries hoped that he could be put to stud to implant the earth into a race of winged wise men who could take charge of the universe.
However, Father Gonzaga decided to determine whether the man was an angel or not by speaking to him in Latin. Since the old man with wings did not recognise Latin and looked too human, the priest decided the man could not be an angel.
Later, Father Gonzaga warned the onlookers that the man was not an angel. However, the people did not care, and word spread that the old man with wings was an angel.
People started coming from all over to Pelayo and Elisenda's house to see the angel. Due to the heavy crowd, they built a fence and charged for people's admission. The old man remained there motionless without any act. But his audience attempted a lot to get him to react. They prodded him with hot iron pokers. The old angel didn't like the act of the audience and responded in anger, flapping his wings and yelling in his strange language.
Later, a new carnival arrived in town, bringing a woman who had been changed into a spider due to her disobedience towards her parents as well as the lightning bolt of brimstone. The audience was allowed to question her, and she told them the details of how she was turned into a tarantula one night for disobeying her parents. That made the audience more attracted to her than the old, strange man who ignored the people around him. The townspeople started losing interest in the old angel. However, Pelayo and Elisenda were able to build a mansion with the fortune they had gained by charging admission.
Their child grew older. He was told not to go near the chicken coop. Yet the child didn't obey his parents' commands. Later, the child and the old man got chickenpox at the same time.
Time passed by, and the old man became weak. When the child's doctor inspected the old man, he found so much whistling in his heart and so many sounds in his kidneys. He found it impossible for him to be alive. But he was shocked to find his wings so natural on that completely human organism.
Once, when the child was of school age, the chicken coop collapsed due to the sun and rain. Later, the old man began to appear at Pelayo and Elisenda's house. He then moved into the shed and became very ill. Yet he survived the entire winter and seemed to improve his health condition with the first sunny days. He spent several days remaining motionless in the farthest corner of the courtyard. At the beginning of December, his wings' stiff features began to grow.
One morning, while Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch, she felt the breeze through her window. When she looked out, she caught sight of the old man flying over the houses. His first attempts were clumsy, but eventually he was able to gain altitude and fly away from Pelayo and Elisenda's house. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief "for herself and for him" upon seeing him go. She kept on looking at him until he was no longer visible to her eyes. The old man was no longer an annoyance in her life.
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