A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In the short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings, Gabriel Garcia Marquez demonstrates the magical realism present in the world, in which humans tend to overlook. The short story is about an old man with enormous wings falling into the lives of a struggling family. This story represents the social group of both humans as very unsettled and insecure, and the magical realist, the man with wings, in a more miraculous and wonderfully mysterious way. In the beginning of the short story, Marquez criticizes humans as being very egotistical. For example, when they first found the angel on the beach, they were skeptical of him and called for the wise old neighbor lady. She explained to them how he was an angel, and was coming down …show more content…
“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.” What is shown here is how Marquez is putting humanity in perspective: If a being with wings appears so natural, are humans the mutants for not having wings? On a much more worldly level, Maquez is separating social groups as a way to accept other social groups. He is separating the groups of magical realists and humanity to show how we are different, and yet still the same on the inside. He is using this to help realize that anything that is living and breathing (especially with human characteristics), really aren’t that different from each other. And thus the question is, so who is the real freak? What he is trying to teach is how we must be accepting and understanding of each and every being, particularly on earth. While Marquez is representing the social group of humans in a very doubting and uneasy manner, the reason for that is when readers read the text, they might see what humans are rather doing to other people different from them, and realize what they need to do to better look at the small miracles in every