Krissi's Analysis of "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings"

Corruption

Starting in the year 1948, Columbia underwent a Civil War, dividing the country in two. This horrific war resulted in a minimum of 180,000 deaths. With the nation split both socially and politically, the morals of the people were being lost, and the idea of the natural man was seen everywhere. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Columbian, expresses the corruptness of the people seen in this day through his short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” He does this by juxtaposition, word choice, and by introducing us to various groups of people and showing us their reactions to a Godly Creature, also known as the angel.

One tool that shows the corruptness of the people is by introducing us to the people themselves. The people are divided into five groups and each shows a different part of corruption including pride, counseling God, lack of faith, and the desire for worldly things. One particular group is the priest, who is a learned man, supposing that he knows the ways of God; however, just like in the times of the Columbian Civil War, the priest steers the people away from good, playing a huge factor in their corruption. Marquez says that “The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers.” The word “His” is capitalized to make a satirical statement. The priest supposes that he will be greeted by warming arms, prideful in all that he does. The priest is not the angel’s minister, and therefore, does not greet him. This is just one example of corruption among the people, and there are many more.

The use of word choice also demonstrates the corruptness of the people by using alien-like words to show that the people are foreign to the angel, or good.

When Elisenda and Pelayo first try talking to the angel, the angel answers back “in an incomprehensible dialect”. The word incomprehensible shows that the people are out of touch with their own morals. They are so far away from what is right that they no longer can speak the language of the angels. Another example of word choice is when the priest goes to see the angel; the angel is in the corner against the wall, trying to heal him from the way that the people had irreverently treated him earlier, saying that he was “Alien to the impertinences of the world”. The words alien and impertinences give a strange sense. The angel is not accustomed to the evils of this world. He is pure and should be treated with respect; however, the people have not done this. The word choice here works together to show the corruptness of the people.

Juxtaposition, another tool of writing, is used throughout the story. The first instance where we see juxtaposition is in the way that the description of the angel. The angel is first described as being “dressed like a ragpicker. 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 any sense of grandeur he might have had”. Later, when the doctor checks him out, he is explained in a way that makes him seem majestic, strange, and like some kind of supernatural creature:
The doctor… couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to the angel’s heart, and he found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys that it seemed impossible for him to be alive. 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.

These two different ways of explaining the angle contrast each other. The first gives an idea of some earthly beaten up human with no strangeness, while the other expresses the perfection in the wings, and the majestic sound of the kidneys. By doing this, Marquez illustrates how the people feel about the angel. The majority of the people seem to look down upon him, and as a result, treat him with disrespect. In contrast, the doctor sees the beauty of the angel, thus showing the reader that there is something special with this supernatural creature. The tool of juxtaposition shows the reader the corruptness of the people by showing that the old man is indeed an angel, yet the people cannot see this and therefore, do not treat him like one.

Corruptness is seen throughout the entire story. Marquez uses the tools of juxtaposition, word choice, and the use of different types of people to illustrate this. The story shows the same corruptness that was also seen during the Columbian War.