"The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"...Huh?

This short story by Marquez has one theme in common with all of the stories I read in my Supernatural and Fantasy comparative literature class—the eruption of the fantastic within the mundane. This theme is found in the works of Poe, Fuentes, Gogol, and Kafka. This leaves the reader guessing and often illustrates a point the author wants to make about the world we live in. Authors use this theme of fantastic elements within the frame of a mundane setting to create ambivalent feelings of both familiarity and uncertainty. In the case of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, the setting is very mundane and when this old man appears with wings, the reader then becomes conflicted with the question: is this old man supernatural or is he human?
Throughout the whole story, the old man is described to us as very human. “He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather had taken away any sense of grandeur he might have had(43). His appearance is completely mundane and pitiful all at once, while the existence of his wings confuses our perception of him. We want to associate him with an angel, but he has none of the “accepted” qualities of an angel. He does not appear majestic, immortal, or regal and he doesn’t have the “proud dignity of angels”. The whole neighborhood ends up “…having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, tossing him things to eat through the openings in the wire as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal”(44). Despite the torment by the neighborhood, the old man stays very introverted and mysterious and we learn nothing from him about his magical abilities or why he is there.
It was obvious that the narrator in this story, as with most other supernatural tales, is very unreliable. We don’t know if we are getting the truth or perception and we don’t get answers to many of our questions. The author meant to lead us through the story with an unrealiable narrator to add an air of mystery and to keep the reader constantly questioning whether events are real or fantastic. The old man is presented to us through unreliable narration. We don't get answers to any of our questions. Is he really an angel? This unreliable narration is what creates the tension between reality and fantasy. It is sort of like an urbanized fairytale. In this urbanized fairytale, Marquez is using the mundane imagery and combining them with the supernatural to contradict the supernatural stereotypes—and stereotypes in general—that our society uses. Angels aren't necessarily white and majestic as we have learned to accept, but maybe they are old grandfather-like men who sing like a sailor. He is getting us to question conventional religious and social norms. Marquez might want to challenge these social norms because, as an artist, he’s pushing the envelope and maybe he is trying to express how society often will not accept things that aren’t familiar to them.
This story could be a “tale for children” because, like many other fairytales, there is a moral to the story (okay, maybe two). The first and most obvious moral is not to let social norms effect the way you see a person or even a religion. The neighbors along with the parents were making assumptions about the old man based on social norms in that village. The parents of the child were pressing their beliefts on the child when they made sure that the child not go anywhere near the chicken coup. And so the cycle goes. This “tale for children” is saying that we should not be so ready to accept those traditional beliefs and socialized images of beauty because image is not everything. Second moral—listen to your mother and father or you might be smited by god and turned into a giant spider by the stoke of a lightning bolt. Enough said.