Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author of “A very Old Man with Enormous Wings” tells a story in a small village where life was normal and simple, a very old man with wings was found near Pelayo courtyard. The author narrates how everybody was curious to find out the new event, however, once perceived it was an old, very old man with disintegrated wing and unable to communicate, the old man lost the fame and interest of the villagers. The author of this story is trying to tell us how society as individual and community as a whole is enchained by own expectation and past experience.
As a result seldom have a rational approach to understanding unorthodox, unconventional, and something out of our comfort zone. Instead, we have a predisposition to prejudice and label with stigma. The old man with a wing symbolizes our unprecedented encounter in personal life, social, religious and cultural groups. We perceive only what is in our anticipation with or without pondering. In this story, Pelayo and Elisenda did not much care about the old man until after their child fever is gone.
They probably believed the old man is the reason, and spare him some care. The old man’s uncanny appearance and strange dialect work against his attention. Once the rumor of the old man as a captive angel spread, he was a great source of income to Pelayo and Elisenda. Later the reputation of the old man was ruined by the speaking Tarantula, and he was left to die. The wise women knew all death and life; when she identifies him as a fallen angel, her glimpse was enough.
She figures his visit was to kill Pelayo and Elisenda child, fortunately the storm stopped him according to her. She also believes he is a fugitive in the heavens and deserves to be clubbed to death. Even if her advice did not stand, but she still was on the story named the wise women. But her wisdom did not inspire her to give her coherent point of view but judgment. Often strangers in our community are considered as outsiders, and alienated without getting a chance or choice.
Segregation, racism and favoritism are few examples of the symptom of our acting know it all. The villagers evidently religious, Father Gonzaga walked in with authority to see the old man; doubtless of the fact God’s language is Latin. When the angle fails to speak God’s language and could not recognize him as God’s servant, that proved the old man is some sort of devil’s trickery. The villagers also come to see an angel from God, craving to see supernatural miracles; however, the old man patience was the old miracle if considered one.
Father Gonzaga and he villagers show no interest to the old man beside their selfish motive. Father Gonzaga wants his acknowledgment from the angel as the man of God; the villagers are after miracle, when that expectation fails to happen, they show no mercy to the old man but treated him as an animal or a fake. The doctor, who comes to visit the child, was curious to check the angle’s body. The old man internal anatomy did not match the doctor’s human body knowledge. And fascinated by the physiology of the wing, take his time to understand the logic of the wing.
The doctor’s conclusion was the old man should be dead by now. Instead of trying to understand the unique opportunity he had to new perspective of his knowledge, his expectation misleads him. And when for sure see the old man had wing and other people do not, he was trapped by his assumption rather than investigating the fact. We deny global warming, waste resource and energy, pollute our environment; yet we call earth modern world. Even our information from science indulges us in self-centered ambition, rather than thinking beyond the horizon.
The irony of the story is, when the cursed women become a spider, the villagers entertain her because at least she can speak. The cursed women can be more dangerous than the poor old man, but since the old man did not meet the expectation to be an angle, first played with them somehow suffered with maltreatment, and at last abandoned. The author tries to infer the old man as our unmet expectation as an individual and society. When we face something we do not understand; and our culture and believe system neither get an explanation, we jump to conclusion that suit for our atonement.
Life can be different and mysterious than what we know. Human being is not the center of everything. There are questions we could not answer; problems we did not solve yet, and new finding with no explanation. Even today in so called our modern world, we taboo culture if different from ours, indigenous societies considered primitive for their culture and belief, foreigners alienated because does not speak our tone, the list goes on. Even our scientific judgment is polluted, everything is self-centered and only to meet our demand and big gluttony to wealth and fame.
