ENG 125 Week 5 Final Paper Literary Analysis

At the beginning of the story, the author said, it had seemingly been raining for about three days, and crabs were found everywhere. The two main characters, Pelayo and Elisenda who are husband and wife had a child who had fallen sick due to the unpleasant smell coming from the crabs. Palayo and Elisenda while on his backyard sees an aged man with enormous wings. They tried to speak with the old man, but he was talking in a different language that they could not comprehend (García & Rabassa 2014). In their minds they believed this man was lost. While they were trying to come up with a conclusion about this stranger, one of coming up with their conclusion about this stranger, one of their neighbors told them that the man was an angel.

Pelayo then decided to keep the angel, and he locked him in a chicken coop all through the night. He planned on sending him off on a raft at dawn. The following morning, Father Gonzaga who was a priest came to the couple's home together with all the people in that neighborhood to test this strange man and try to figure out whether he is an angel or not. Father Gonzaga found many reasons for the man being an angel and not a human, some of the reasons being the fact that the man cannot comprehend Latin which is the language of God and he also had many moral values imparted in him (García & Rabassa 2014).

Elisenda felt exhausted from cleaning up after all of the visitors and decided to start charging people who come to see this angel a fee of five cents per entrance. The couple ended up becoming rich from these visits. Within no time, to the couple's bad luck, the people in the community soon lost their interest in the angel when another strange creature came to their attention in the very town. The new creature turned out to be a woman who had defied her parents when she was younger and since then changed into a tarantula. For this woman tarantula to carry on telling them her story, the people within the communal started throwing meatballs into her mouth (García & Rabassa 2014). They had labelled these meatballs as her means of food. Even though the people in the town were no longer fascinated with the angel, the family ended up saving enough money to build themselves a mansion enclosed with precincts and balconies. They seemed to be contented with their unplanned success, not having anticipated it. The angel's health started to weaken, and it anticipated death. On his last wintertime inside the chicken coop his health astonishingly improved and he grew new feathers.

In due course, the chicken coop collapsed, and the 'angel' moved in with the Pelayo family in their mansion. Over the years, the angel started to become an irritation for the family. At a certain point, Elisenda even tried to chase him away from their lives. The 'angel' attempted flying away many times with no apparent success. Finally, in the end, he managed to leave the house and flew away after he gained enough strength. (Goodwin, 2006).

In conclusion, the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez plaited the ordinary with the supernatural in an unanticipated but nevertheless a very interesting way (Goodwin, 2006). This story leaves us asking ourselves question like what could have our response if we were challenged with the supernatural right in our normal lives. By combining the ordinary and repugnant portions of life with the miraculous, Marquez proficiently makes the use of a unique style and creative tone to create a story that carries foundations of ordinary life, yet supersedes it. His story bids us, as readers, to look a little closer at the happenings in our lives and define how we are reacting to the mundane we face (Goodwin, 2006). He motivates us to take a second glimpse at the not-quite-normal occasions that hint a deeper connotation. His story suggests that the circulating of the mundane with miraculous could change our lives if we view them with the precise standpoint.

References

García, M. G., & Rabassa, G. (2014). A very old man with enormous wings: And the sea of lost time

Goodwin, John. (2006). “Marquez’s ‘A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings’ and Bambara’s ‘The Lesson.” The Explicator 64.2 (Winter 2006): p118-121. Literature Resource Center.