43 pages • 1 hour read
Gabriel García MárquezA Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Literary Devices
Zoomorphism
Zoomorphism is a literary device that ascribes animalistic traits to non-animals (including people). The angel in “A Very Old Man” is a clear example. His wings invite comparisons to birds, and allow Pelayo and Elisenda to rationalize locking him in a chicken coop that the narrator calls his “borrowed nest” (Paragraph 8). The comparison to a chicken—a flightless bird—is particularly significant, as the old man is unable to fly until the very end of the story. His branding is also zoomorphic, recalling cows and other livestock, and symbolizing the community’s control over him. Until this moment, the old man displayed the “patience of a dog” (Paragraph 11)—another animal reference. Later, when the chicken coop falls apart, the old man wanders about Pelayo and Elisenda’s home in a way that recalls the crabs at the beginning of the story; the old man has infested their house like the crabs brought by the storm. Zoomorphism also appears in the figure of the tarantula woman, who has literally transformed into a giant spider. These comparisons to various animals make it easier for the community to torture the old man or gawk at the spider woman, because they see them as less than human. Ironically, this renders the old man more sympathetic, while the townspeople come to seem like the real “animals.”
Narrative Mirroring
Several moments throughout the story mirror or correspond with each other. For example, the story begins with Elisenda caring for her sick child, who then makes a miraculous recovery. Similarly, near the end of the story, the sickly old man “went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man” before making a miraculous recovery (Paragraph 12). When the popularity of the angel fills Pelayo and Elisenda’s courtyard with curious people and their trash, Elisenda must clean up the courtyard just as Pelayo cleared it of crabs earlier. Additionally, carnivals appear twice in the story: first when the angel outshines a flying acrobat, and next when the tarantula woman arrives to outshine the angel himself.
The story repeats itself like this in order to create a seemingly consistent narrative pattern that may then be subverted ironically. The reader expects the outcome they have experienced before, so flipping that outcome on its head adds to the work’s magical realism. In a solely magical story, events and outcomes usually line up comfortably to teach a moral lesson; in a solely realistic story, they may be abrupt and unexpected to convey the unpredictability of real life. Magical realism therefore blends both expected and reversed or mirrored events.
Omniscient Narrator
The story is told from the point of view of a God-like narrator that knows the personal thoughts, motivations, and history of each character. The fact that the story contains virtually no dialogue reinforces our dependence on this narrator; we never see any of the main characters speak for themselves, and the only dialogue is the neighbor woman’s statement that the winged man is an angel (Paragraph 3). Of course, the narrator’s omniscience provides them with some authority; because the storyteller is all-knowing, we can assume they aren’t mistaken about the story’s events. However, considering that the story itself confronts its characters with questions of faith and reason, the omniscient narrator (who suspiciously never confirms the “truth” of the angel) becomes easier to question. Readers must ultimately choose either to take the narrator’s account at face-value like the townspeople, or, like Father Gonzaga, react more conservatively and question the story’s source. The story itself hints that it’s important to get narratives firsthand, as the crowd prefers the tarantula woman to the angel because she tells her own story. The fact that the story is an English translation of the original Spanish source makes this question of firsthand knowledge even more complex and important.
Related Titles
By Gabriel García Márquez
