Being an Angel Doesn't Have All Its Perks

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What people see versus what they understand can affect their conscious minds, and their decisions. When presented with the unknown, it is up to us to decide whether we are going to react to it, or understand it. Everyone and everything undergo judgment at one point in their existence. In “A Very Old Man with Wings,” Gabriel Garcia Marquez explores this idea through “magical realism.” A genre Tom Faulkner characterizes by its “imaginative content, vivid effects, and lingering mystery.” Magical realism takes “fantastic elements” and combines them with “realistic details” to create a genre that poses the debatable question (Faulkner). Marquez fabricates this concept through a fictive “world where the miraculous and the everyday live side-by-side,” a world that acts animalistic when introduced with something unfamiliar (Faulkner). During, what seems like an astrological end of times event, where it has been raining for three days straight, Pelayo and Elisenda—two townspeople of a small village—find an old man with enormous wings on their courtyard. After gathering all the information they needed, they concluded that indeed he was an angel, but given the “ragpicker” clothes he wore, and the “drenched great-grandfather” look he had, they dragged him and locked him up “with the hens in the wire chicken coop” (“A Very Old”). Soon after the angel’s arrival, the townspeople and the church followed Pelayo and Elisenda’s footsteps and treated him “with no reverence” whatsoever (“A Very Old”). Marquez depicts the ugly truth of human nature through the conflict of the unknown and how when presented with the unknown Pelayo, Elisenda, the townspeople and even the church treat “the angel” like a “circus animal” (“A Very Old”). The pos... ... middle of paper ... ...aves it up for the reader’s analysis. This way after reading the story we would become better people and rise against the status quo of human nature. Works Cited Faulkner, Tom. “An Overview of ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,’.” Gale Online Encyclopedia. Detroit: Gale, 2014. Literature Resource Center. Web. 19 Feb. 2014 Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” Norton Introduction to Literature. 11th Edition. Ed. Kelly Mays. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2013. 1777-1843. Print. "Overview: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”." Short Stories for Students. Ed. Tim Akers. Vol. 6. Detroit: Gale Group, 1999. Literature Resource Center. Web. 18 Feb. 2014. Slomski, Genevieve. "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings." Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition (2004): 1-2. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.

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