A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

“He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.” 

This sentence is emblematic of García Márquez’s writing style, which Rabassa has also captured in his translation. Both versions contain many commas and long, flowing sentences. In this passage, the audience, much like Pelayo himself, waits in suspense to discover why the old man is stuck in the mud.

His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar.” 

This moment foreshadows just how familiar Pelayo and his family will become with the old man as the story progresses. It is also one of the first clear examples of the story’s magical realism: the fantastic wings appear alongside the mundaneness of dirty mud. Notably, the man is “uncanny” both as a man (because of his wings) and as an angel (because his wings’ shabby appearance doesn’t correspond to conventional angelic imagery).

But when they went out into the courtyard with the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.” 

This scene demonstrates the function the old man serves in the story and in the lives of the townspeople. For the latter, he is an entertaining attraction, and this response showcases the curious and sometimes cruel side of human nature; even though the villagers believe the man may be more than human—an angel—they treat him as subhuman.

“He argued that if wings were not the essential element in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels.” 

Here is an example of how Father Gonzaga uses reason while others assume the old man must be an angel. Although he is by definition a man of faith, Father Gonzaga tries to use logic to persuade the community that wings do not automatically signify an angel. Ironically, this makes Father Gonzaga one of the most rational characters in the story, but even his rationality has limits; considering the situation’s outlandishness, parsing definitions as Gonzaga does here doesn’t seem like an appropriate response.

“The curious came from far away. A traveling carnival arrived with a flying acrobat who buzzed over the crowd several times, but no one paid any attention to him because his wings were not those of an angel but, rather, those of a sidereal bat. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments.” 

This passage shows more of the story’s magical elements, as people arrive seeking angelic miracles from the old man. It also foreshadows and mirrors a later moment in the story when the spider woman arrives to unseat the old man as the community’s popular circus attraction; both feature lists of fantastic people and a traveling carnival.

“His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience.” 

Here, we encounter the voice of the story’s omniscient narrator. As he describes the people’s marvel at the supposed angel, the narrator reveals that the old man may not actually have “supernatural” powers at all. Instead, the old man possesses patience—a very human trait, though not usually to this extent. The passage therefore highlights the extraordinary or miraculous in what might seem commonplace, while also showing the author’s subtle sense of humor.

“The only time they succeeded in arousing him was when they burned his side with an iron for branding steers, for he had been motionless for so many hours that they thought he was dead. He awoke with a start, ranting in his hermetic language and with tears in his eyes, and he flapped his wings a couple of times, which brought on a whirlwind of chicken dung and lunar dust and a gale of panic that did not seem of this world. Although many thought that his reaction had been one not of rage but of pain, from then on they were careful not to annoy him, because the majority understood that his passivity was not that of a hero taking his ease but that of a cataclysm in repose.” 

This passage highlights the old man’s uncertain position on the spectrum of subhuman to superhuman. He is branded like a farm animal, but then his wings flap powerfully enough to frighten the crowd, who in turn believe he is an angel but not a hero. This constant friction between fantasy and reality is the heart of magical realism.

“Father Gonzaga held back the crowd’s frivolity with formulas of maidservant inspiration while awaiting the arrival of a final judgement on the nature of the captive. But the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency. They spent their time finding out if the prisoner had a navel, if his dialect had any connection with Aramaic, how many times he could fit on the head of a pin, or whether he wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings.” 

The words “final judgement” are ironic: they hold obvious religious connotations in the context of Father Gonzaga waiting to hear the Church’s ruling on the angel, but it isn’t the Church but the people in the community who actually have the “final” say on the man. In the very next paragraph, the community revokes the mythical status of the supposed angel in favor of another creature. The passage also highlights the irrationality of the Church’s dogma; faced with an objectively extraordinary situation, the Church focuses obsessively on arcane and irrelevant details.

“A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel, who scarcely deigned to look at mortals. Besides, the few miracles attributed to the angel showed a certain mental disorder, like the blind man who didn’t recover his sight but grew three new teeth, or the paralytic who didn’t get to walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores sprouted sunflowers. Those consolation miracles, which were more like mocking fun, had already ruined the angel’s reputation when the woman who had been changed into a spider finally crushed him completely.”

Here we see more of the author’s sense of humor and magical realism. In fantasy, the supernatural creature is typically all-powerful and teaches the characters and audience a valuable lesson. The old man is deficient in this respect, since it’s hard to discern a moral in the apparent arbitrariness of his miracles. The crowd therefore replaces him with a “better” magical being who can accomplish the task by conveying a “fearful lesson.” This competition is a humorous touch of realism amid the scene’s magical tropes.

“With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during winter, and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in.” 

This passage compares the angel to the crabs that have invaded Pelayo’s house, once again dehumanizing him. However, as Pelayo’s home renovation demonstrates, the angel is hardly a pest, since he has financed Pelayo’s new lifestyle. In this way, the old man metaphorically becomes a magical angel whose presence brings Pelayo and his family wealth.

“The angel was no less standoffish with him than with other mortals, but he tolerated the most ingenious infamies with the patience of a dog who had no illusions.”

This scene juxtaposes the angel with a human child. Like Pelayo and Elisenda’s son, the angel is helpless, unhealthy at first, and dependent on Pelayo and Elisenda. The angel therefore seems to be stuck in the spiritual state between childhood and adulthood despite appearing as an old man, just as he variously strikes characters as both subhuman and superhuman.

“What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism that he couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have them too.” 

The doctor in this scene serves as another symbol of logic and reason, much like Father Gonzaga. However, while Father Gonzaga remains convinced the old man is not an angel, the doctor starts to doubt his scientific training so much that the man’s wings seem biologically natural. Like the earlier moment where the angel becomes quickly “familiar” to Pelayo and Elisenda, the moment highlights the angel’s uncanny nature.

“He seemed to be in so many places at the same time that they grew to think that he’d been duplicated, that he was reproducing himself all through the house, and the exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels.” 

Pelayo and Elisenda believe the old man to be an angel, but instead of attributing benevolent power to him, they see his power as an annoyance. García Márquez’s humor and wordplay underscores this point; the phrase “hell full of angels” is purposefully oxymoronic, and reflects the family’s irrational response to a theoretically holy being.