In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, a family encounters an old man who has enormous wings. Pelayo and Elisenda, the husband wife that found the old man, decide to put the old man into the chicken coop because the old man seems physically incapable of doing anything. Eventually, the word gets out to the town that there is an old man with wings, and Pelayo and Elisenda decide to charge people to come see the old man for there own profit. Eventually the people of the town start to wonder if the old man really is an angel, and decide to call the priest to get the final word. The priest judges whether this man is just an old man with wings, or if he really is an angel only by the words of the bible, and not by any other means.
“The parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers.” This is a perfect example of how the priest only obeys what the bible tells him. The priest has never spoke to an angel or god himself before, how is he so sure that the Language of god is truly Latin. Also, the priest judges that the old man is really not an angel by the way he smells, and the fact that his wings were “strewn with parasites”. He has not ever seen an angel before, but he only judges by the words that are in the bible, and does not use his own judgment. This opens a new point that society relies to heavily on religion and forget to use there own judgments.
Marquez also critiques the Catholic Church when it comes to the hierarchy in the system. It represents more a government then it does a religion. For example “he promised to write to his bishop so that the latter would write to his primate so that the latter would write to the Supreme Pontiff in order to get the final verdict form the highest courts.” Marquez openly makes it sound as if he was talking about a government body with its different levels of power.
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Your argument that Marquez is comparing the Catholic church to Government is interesting but vague. In my opinion he was showing how strict the religion is. That there are steps in determining whether something is a religious miracle or not instead of using their judgment. Like Pelayo and Elisenda who discovered the old man with wings they did not want to decide whether he was a angel or not, they wanted their religion or their priest to tell them. However since he is strict with his religion he could not decide because he did not want to use his own opinion which may go against his religion and God, so he asks someone higher in command. People fear being wrong so they rely on their religion for an answer however like in the story the answers may never come.
ReplyDeleteI really agree with your analysis of the priest's reaction to the angel. When he mentions the smell and wings full of parasites, he prompts it with saying the angel is "too human." This is truly ironic and absurd. I like that you put it quite literally that sometimes logic is the last place we go looking for answers.
ReplyDeleteI also liked that you mentioned how Marquez compares the hierarchy in the Catholic Church to hierarchy in government, but I think you could have elaborated more on the effect of this. Marquez does this in such a way to point out the frivolity of it all, and to greater emphasize that no one has an answer. Even the form of the sentence points to this, which I found to be funny.