In 1968, famed Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez released short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” in the journal Casa de las Américas. The tale follows a couple living in a seaside village who encounters an incoherent winged man. After recognizing his crowd appeal, they place him in a chicken coop and profit off his abuse. Recurring patterns of treatment of the man within the story reflect the real-world struggle for human rights of the disabled during the 1960s and 70s. Contrasting diction when describing the man and his actions fills the role of further ostracizing him while also highlighting his humanity. Márquez also builds several scenarios in which genuine interactions between the man and others elucidate the tendency of humans to place emphasis on our differences. Only those who attempt to connect with the man find themselves acknowledging their similarities, bringing to light the idea that we are unable to form accurate opinions on those we have not engaged with on a personal level. Through descriptions of a hyperbolized example of deformity as well an emphasis on character interactions, Márquez calls to question what it means to be human and showcases the discrimination faced by the differently abled.
Without hesitation Márquez includes almost animalistic descriptive imagery to lay the foundation of the public’s opinion towards the man. When the couple finds the man in their yard, his wings are immediately described as “dirty and half-plucked” and reminiscent of those of a “buzzard” (Márquez, para. 2). Word choice such as this would likely not indicate a human character out of context; therefore, it is clear that the man is being portrayed as an animal in these instances. The man is then forced to stay in a caged chicken coop with the hens, an indirect reference to his outward appearance. Márquez affirms this idea when he later describes the man as a “huge decrepit hen” (Márquez, para. 5). Throughout the story, the man is referred to as an “angel” in an obviously mocking tone considering the grotesque descriptions given to him. Márquez makes a conscious effort to dehumanize and isolate the winged-man, and this is made clear by his descriptive imagery and diction. Despite this, he uses these same techniques in other parts of the story to instead humanize the man to the reader and raise the question: what does it really mean to be human?
Contrasting the attempts to portray the man as inhuman, there are many instances within the story in which Márquez deliberately chooses words that would indicate otherwise. Calling back to when the couple finds the man, he is said to have a “strong sailor’s voice” and speaks in “an incomprehensible dialect” (Márquez, para. 2). Aside from the fact that they cannot understand his language, just the inclusion of these phrases stresses that the man does in fact speak in a manner that the couple can acknowledge. Later in the story the man is visited by a priest who attempts to determine what he is. Upon inspection, the priest believed the man to be “much too human,” a phrase which obviously contradicts his previous descriptions (Márquez, para. 5). Furthermore, a moment arises in which the man expresses emotion after being branded by a villager and is described as having “tears in his eyes”. Tears, being a response most notable to humans, again show his similarities. Maybe the most obvious example of Márquez implying the winged-man’s human status is when the man is examined by the local doctor. According to said doctor, the wings were “natural on that completely human organism” and his anatomy was even more logical than a normal human (Márquez, para. 11). Perhaps the man is not only human, but more human than the rest of us. Márquez’s complex word choice and descriptive language displays both the cruelty and dehumanization faced by those with deformities as well as the concept that these differences are negligible when compared to our similarities. These two arguments are also seen when interpreting the meaning of many of the interactions between the winged-man and the villagers.
Throughout the story, many people with various intentions pay visit to the man. When the couple first encounters the man, the shock of his appearance was overtaken by a feeling of familiarity the longer and closer they looked (Márquez, para. 2). In fact, after hearing his voice and engaging with him, the couple quickly forgot about the wings altogether and deduced the man to be a shipwrecked sailor. It was only until a neighbor told them that they were wrong after one brief glance that the man was caged up in the chicken coop. This initial interaction is an example of the forementioned idea that one cannot possibly know somebody based on a short, distanced encounter. The couple had decided the man to be human after spending a significant portion of time with him, yet their neighbor was quick to dispute this. Márquez implies that all it takes is to look past the outward appearance of the man to recognize the commonalities between him and the villagers.
Once the man becomes trapped in the cage, the townspeople find the man and throw food at him “through the openings in the wire” as if he were a “circus animal” (Márquez, para. 4). Belaboring the point that the people abuse him from behind the cage, Márquez shows the literal and figurative barriers that have been put up to separate the villagers from the man. These people do not want to personally engage with the man because they feel he is an animal, yet if they only stepped into the cage, they would see how human he really is. This concept unfortunately reflects the opinions towards the differently abled held by many people in the real world during the late 60s and even today. Two important relationships explored by Márquez are between the man and the priest and the man and the doctor. Both the priest and the doctor were willing to step into the cage to connect with the winged-man, and both stumbled upon the realization that the man is human. In the instance of the priest, the man is discerned to be human based on his flaws; he is smelly, dirty, and has been worn down physically and mentally from the torments of the world. The doctor, however, finds him to be human based on the brilliance of his anatomy and his resilience. Márquez dramatizes these two strikingly different interactions to show that the man shares both the weaknesses and strengths of a human being. Again, the author is able to use the connections between characters to accentuate the idea that the differently abled are wrongfully discriminated against and that humanity cannot be determined from short-term encounters.
The events of Gabriel Márquez’s short story align with the start of an ongoing movement to dismantle “ableism”, or the discrimination of those with disabilities. Prior to the 1960s, disabled people were treated in a similar manner to the winged man. They were treated like freaks, made fun of, and even forced into specific living situations, as was the man confined to the chicken coop (Encyclopedia Britannica, “Ableism | Discrimination”). During the time of the writing of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, disabled people and their allies put pressure on the government to create legislature that would protect their human rights. Márquez’s tale likely brought further attention to the matter.
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” written by Gabriel García Márquez thoroughly describes a man with a hyperbolized deformity and lays out his complex interactions with the rest of humanity. Through this, Márquez asks the world what it means to be human and exposes the cruelty faced by differently abled individuals. Márquez’s story is still incredibly relevant today as many disabled people fight for their rights and respect. Discriminatory ideologies against disabled individuals persist in the minds of many across the world. We must not segregate ourselves from those unlike us and we must recognize that our similarities always overshadow our differences.
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Featured Image From creativecommons.org for Free and Fair Reuse