Conflict Between a Person and Society in the Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
My favorite quote of an unknown author that was found by me in the internet is the following: “We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us and wealth classified us.” (Humanistdaily.com, 2015) I cannot but totally agree with it. Nowadays, people put more and more significance on the person’s race and appearance, religion and origin, style and clothing, traditions and culture, wealth and social status. These reactions are based on the different kinds of stereotypes and prejudice that are dictated by the society and its distorted norms.
Unfortunately, such responses to the other person distinction are not a novelty and can result in various conflicts. The main character of the short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, written and published by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1955, becomes a victim of village people because of not fitting into the world of their narrow minds. With the help of magical realism Marquez tries to reveal the flaws of the society that are still relevant in the nowadays community.
Gabriel Marquez is an outstanding Colombian writer and one of the representatives of a literary movement known as magic realism. The significant feature of magic realism is a mixture of different cultural customs and traditions, of ancient myths and realities of modern life with the moral norms of the society. This literary movement presents an interdependent combination of fantastic and realistic features, of mythological and domestic outlook on life. This very conflict between imaginary and rational world serves as a basis to the short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.
The action takes place in the usual village, where unusual things happen. On the courtyard of an ordinary family of Elisenda and Pelayo appears an out of ordinary man with enormous wings. The village people knew neither where the old man came from nor who he is and why he has two enormous wings on his back. That is the place where magical realism is used in all its beauty.
The conflict in the short story arises between a person and society that can be seen in the treatment of the village people towards the man with the wings. Their attitude causes a storm of readers’ resentment and indignation as the winged man is innocent and does no harm to others: “His only angelic virtue seemed to be patience. The hens pecked at him, and injured visitors pulled out feathers to touch their broken limbs with. Even kind people threw stones at him, trying to get him to stand up.” (Marquez, 2015)
The people, who gathered to see the new creature, immediately begin to judge the man by his appearance: “There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away and sense of grandeur he might have had.” (Marquez, 2015) The author gives a very realistic description of a man that makes the villagers as well as the reader to imagine an ordinary person. The image of an old beggar emerges in the mind. But Marquez bewilders everybody by the following specification: “His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked were forever entangled in the mud.” (Marquez, 2015) One of the neighbors supposes that it is an angel, because he has wings. The opinions divided, but the attitude towards the old man is one and the same – he is different, not like them, so does not deserve a proper attention.
The village people, not being able to distinguish the origin of the man, decide to address the priest. With such a decision of the people Gabriel Marquez highlights the inability of the society to accept a person without consulting a higher instance or referring to particular norms approved by the majority. The silliness of the actions and words of the Father Gonzaga and the fully trust of the village people in them emphasize on the people’s blind faith and passivity: “He reminded them that the devil had the bad habit of making use of carnival tricks in order to confuse the unwary. He argued that if wings were not an essential element in determining the different between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels.” (Marquez, 2015) Even priest is not sure of his own words and promises to “write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict from the highest courts.” (Marquez, 2015) That fact that the old man did not communicate and what the worst – could not speak Latin. It seemed very strange and suspicious to Father Gonzaga, as he insisted that Latin is the language of God and angels should know it, too. It is obvious that nobody knows with what language God communicates, and He, actually, does
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