When someone makes up stories to explain the things they do not understand, it is more often than not that things will get out of hand. For example, when ancient civilizations confronted themselves with how the world came to be, they came up with explanations involving clashes between angels, entire worlds existing on the backs of very large turtles, and human beings born from the union of only one couple. The same situation can occur when something happens more close to home, such as a drifter with a dark and shady past coming through town. It is the latter situation that is close to what happens in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story, “Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.”
In this story, a young couple suddenly finds themselves hosting (albeit not very hospitably) a, as the title suggests, very old man with enormous wings attached to his back. He is not clean and shining like an angel, however; he is dirty and even senile, speaking in a language that no one can understand. They and the other people in the town believe that he may be an angel. Later, though, a priest comes by to observe the old man and notes that he is not speaking Latin and does not seem to understand Latin, so he could not be an angel. The couple and the priest want to keep his existence a secret, but word gets out and people come from miles around to see this strange old man that a couple has in their chicken coop (Marquez).
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In the story, the people who come to see the old man harass him and throw stones at him. The young man and woman whose chicken coop he is staying in charge admission to see him, and as a result become quite wealthy (Marquez). This is indicative of how the old man and Pelayo and Elisenda depend on one another. While his conditions at Pelayo and Elisenda’s house are not ideal, the couple still allows him to stay on their property rather than running him off or calling the police, as they could have done. In return, when the public finds out about this old man, they come in droves to see him, generating a comfortable income for Pelayo and Elisenda.
This mutually beneficial arrangement has some downsides, however. The old man is not entirely safe, as even though some of the townspeople feel sorry for him still others pelt him with stones and scream dirty names at him (Marquez). This hard that the townspeople cause to the old man is very aggressive and intentional. Intentional harm implies that the aggressor knows that what they are doing will hurt the victim, as they are forced to confront how that offense would feel if it were being committed against them. This forces them to feel empathy, which may be the exact opposite of what they are hoping to feel (Bischof-Kohler 7). When someone is being cruel to another person, they likely do not have any interest in seeing the situation from their victim’s point of view.
It is for the reason of empathy that this story is about not judging something before one truly understands it. Elisenda, Pelayo, and the others do not fully understand who or what the old man is, and so they assume that he is either stupid or senile. The abuse that some of the people hurl at him because they perceive him to be different from themselves is sickening; the old man is not hurting anyone. True, he is basically squatting on private property, but there is a lesson to be learned here, and a resounding one at that: When we make assumptions about people based on their looks or other external factors, we run the risk of overlooking that which may make them impressive and spectacular.
