Earthly and Airy Things in “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”

March 8^th, 2018

In Gabriel García Márquez’ “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” the old man’s dual nature as a transcendental yet painfully human – almost animalistic – figure reveals and disrupts the human view of the divine as a sacred, superior ‘other.’ This shows itself in the inability of characters to reconcile his two halves; their rejection of him in favour of the Spider-Woman, whose story reinforces the traditional divisions between God and man; and in the language attached to the ‘angel,’ which blurs the boundaries between Heaven and Earth – immaterial and immanent – to suggest they are one in the same.

The old man disrupts the material world of the text not merely through his transcendental nature, but in the fact that he embodies both worlds, and therefore defies easy categorization. When Pelayo and Elisenda first see the angel, they “[skip] over the inconvenience of the wings” and “quite intelligently conclude” that he is a castaway – a man (289). His rough human characteristics challenge the idea that angels should embody a higher “grandeur,” and so – rather than adjusting their view of the divine – they ignore the “inconvenience” of his wings to place him on one side of a binary: angel or man (289). This same binary is enacted by the Catholic church, who ask whether he “could fit on the head of a pin,” or whether he “wasn’t just a Norwegian with wings,” an either/or question of immateriality against immanence. They judge the angel based on his ability to conform to their image of the divine, as expanding their assumptions about the nature of transcendence would require them to compromise the foundations of their religion, in which Christ is the only divine being to take human form.

While the angel’s abrasive humanity subverts the grandeur of the divine, the Spider-Woman is accepted because her story reinforces the traditional divisions that separate human beings from divine ones. She explains that her transformation is the result of transgressing a clear boundary, having “danced all night without permission,” for which she was immediately punished – struck by a “lighting bolt of brimstone” (291). Márquez’ use of “brimstone” reigning down from the sky evokes the idiom of ‘fire and brimstone,’ a biblical phrase most famously used in reference to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah; it is an expression of divine wrath and judgement. The fact that the Spider-Woman was “still practically a child” when this occurred reinforces the image as an expression of God’s power as the heavenly father – exercising superior moral judgement against his flawed human children (291). As angels are traditionally considered bringers of God’s will, the old man’s human form and antisocial behaviour suggests a God of lesser moral power. This is further seen in that the Spider-Woman’s transformation was preceded by a “thunderclap” that “rent the sky in two” (291), a image of clear division (the kind preferred by characters in the story), while the angel’s entrance is preceded by a description of “sea and sky” as “a single ash-grey thing,” implying a confluence between heaven and earth – a perfect symbol for the angel’s merger of both human and angelic traits (289). The use of “ash” is also significant as it contrasts the ‘fire’ implied by the brimstone strike against the Spider-Woman. This characterises her coming as an expression of God’s active power, while the angel’s ‘ash’ suggests a fire already put out, mirroring his dampness, age, and decay as “a drenched great-grandfather” (289) with “antiquarian eyes” (290).

The text’s deconstruction of the divine as a separate, other-worldly force is also reflected in the language associated with the old man; similes and associations repeatedly align him with both natural and supernatural objects. For example, chickens peck through his wings, searching for “stellar parasites,” suggesting earthly life beyond Earth (290). When burned with an iron, the old man conjures a whirlwind of “chicken dung and lunar dust” (291). By manifesting objects of earthy consumption alongside a cosmic substance, Márquez suggests the elements of the universe all share a common divinity; matter is consumed and used to fertilize new life in soil, and that soil is not so different from the soil of the moon. The text also repeatedly compares him to birds: he has “huge buzzard wings” (289); he looks like a “decrepit hen among the chickens” (290); he flaps his wings like a “senile vulture” (293). These comparisons clearly diminish the grandeur of the angel as an otherworldly creature, but they also place him on the same level as the animals to suggest he is not superior to them. The similes also work in the opposite way: if an angel is in the likeness of a chicken, that chicken is in the likeness of an angel; they are not beings of a separate nature but share a common divinity as God’s creations. This idea is reaffirmed in the text’s claim that the old man's one clear “supernatural virtue [seems] to be patience” (291), the “patience of a dog” (292). This suggests that the supernatural is not exclusive to divine beings – that God can reveal itself as Dog. Supernatural power need not be only an expression of God’s will or judgement; it can also be a simple virtue – a simple kindness.

Ultimately, the story constructs the angel as an earthly creature to suggest a more immanent view of the divine, where sea and sky are of the same nature. While characters brush up against this truth – challenging their way of perception – they are ultimately unable to reconcile it. However, Márquez’ language allows the reader to implicitly recognize this idea; the transformative element of the text is enacted within the text itself so that an expanded view of the universe is realized through the act of reading.