irony in a very old man with enormous wings
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How does the author use irony (the incongruity between what appears to be and what actually is) in the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”?
In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” irony appears in the disparity between the old man’s appearance and his identification as an angel, in the villagers’ harsh treatment of this “angel,” and in the horrendous mistreatment of the man even if he is not really an angel.
Literary Analysis Of A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
A Tale for Children
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children” which was written in 1955 by Gabriel García Márquez has been described by many as difficult to understand and hard to follow. Faulkner describes it as having a “charming (but unsettling) effect” (1) on readers. Raney says that the story leaves most readers not fully understanding it because it uses a “subtler irony” (108) that “whispers” (108) to them and that it leaves too many “loose ends” (106). In this day and age, where most “live in Literal Land” (Raney 108) readers need assistance in order to hear and understand this type of irony, they need definitive hints, and they need to be told what to…show more content…


The first thing that Faulkner points at as unsettling is the fact that a creature with wings “must be either a monster or a miracle” (1) and yet the doctor in the story writes him off as being normal, that his wings are logical even. No one question’s the man’s wings or how he got to Pelayo and Elisenda’s courtyard. Faulkner states that the author has left it impossible to fit the old man into any preconceived mental box because there is “tension between the old man’s magical and human qualities” (1).
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A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings Short Stories
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Envision yourself learning the magical ways of a curandera, or finding an angel in your very own town without surprise. Fantasize a humongous, handsome man the size of a ship washing from the shore. These all could be described as magical realism stories. Magical Realism is the binding of the ordinary in life with magical aspects in a way that makes it seem normal. In the short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: A Tale for Children” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, it displays
verbal irony in a very old man with enormous wings
“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” functions as a satirical piece that mocks both the Catholic Church and human nature in general. García Márquez criticizes the church through Father Gonzaga’s superiors in Rome, who seem to be in no hurry to discover the truth about the bedraggled, so-called angel.
Instead, they ask Father Gonzaga to study the old man’s unintelligible dialect to see whether it has any relation to Aramaic, the language of Jesus. They also ask Gonzaga to determine how many times the old man can fit on the head of a pin, another dig at Catholicism referencing an arcane medieval theory once thought to prove God’s omnipotence.
Their final conclusion that the old man with wings may in fact be a stranded Norwegian sailor only makes the church sound absurdly literal-minded and out of touch with even the most basic elements of reality.
example of verbal irony in a very old man with enormous wings
Such criticisms of the church are only part of García Márquez’s critique of human beings in general, who never seem to understand the greater significance of life. There is a narrowness of vision that afflicts everyone from the wise neighbor woman, with her unthinking know-it-all ways, to the kindly Father Gonzaga, who is desperate for a procedure to follow, to the crowds of onlookers and pilgrims with their selfish concerns.


Elisenda too is more focused on keeping her kitchen and living room angel-free than on considering the odd beauty of her unwelcome guest. She, however, seems to have a moment of realization and almost of regret at the end of the story, when she watches the old man disappear from her life forever. Just as the proverbial lost hiker who can’t see the wilderness for the trees, García Márquez suggests that most people live their lives unaware of their significance in the world.