A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Alexander Potako College

In his short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez leaves readers to wonder whether one of the central characters is actually an angel. There is no clear answer to this question because the old man remains a rather mysterious figure throughout the story, and the open ending makes him even more ambiguous. However, I think that Marquez intentionally leaves it for everyone to decide whether this character is an angel or not, and this decision is meant to reveal people for who they truly are.

The old man is not wholly developed because there is no possibility to get an insight into his character. He allows the absolute freedom of interpretation to other characters and readers alike because he never attempts to speak for himself. Nor does he try to act independently until the very end of the story when he decides to fly away. His inability to communicate with other characters relies on the fact that he does not speak the local language, Spanish. Apparently, he is not willing to learn as he communicates only in his native language: “Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice” (Garcia Marquez 2). This makes him even more of a stranger than he...