“A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORMOUS WINGS”AS A SOCIAL COMMENTARY:
...t provincial ignorance and superstition generally will prevail over truth, logic, or common sense. Seeking a more informed opinion, Pelayo and Elisenda “called in a neighbor woman who knew everything about life and death,” and who, after one look, advised them that: “He is an angel.” The author provides a telling social commentary with this “neighbor woman” situation. Her being described as knowing “everything about life and death” is a remarkable revelation of Gabrial Marquez’ understanding of the superstitious nature of those ordinary folk who are confronted with the “angel.” The neighbor woman’s credibility, surely based on superstition and hearsay, has more weight and sway with the common people than any really authoritative source, like perhaps the government or the police. She is called in first. The situation indicates a willingness to relinquish decision-making to “someone else,” and thereby be relieved of responsibility in a troubling, confusing issue. The neighbor woman, speaks of angels as being the “fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy,” suggesting that even the angel had been outcast from a conspiratorial heaven, and supporting further the notion of the outsider as eternal outcast. Further antagonistic behavior toward the unfortunate outsider angel is seen when, in rapid succession, he is imprisoned in the chicken coop, and then goaded unmercifully by the community. “With the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighborhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel, without the slightest reverence, …as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.” Some small degree of compassion is evidenced when Pelayo, “armed with his bailiff’s club,” “did not have the heart to club him to death.” Nevertheless, although not outright clubbed to death, there was no other merciful comfort or relief administered by the exclusive community to the suffering alien angel. The hostile society shows no responsiveness at all for his need for help. In conjunction with the unreceptive treatment of the angel, greed and self-interest are also manifest in the behavior of the people. Some felt that the “angel” “should be named mayor of the world,” or become a “general in order to win all wars,” or conceive “winged wise men who could take charge of the universe.” Although everyone clearly recognizes greatness before them, it is immediately perverted into a desire for great gains for themselves. There is no sentiment at all expressed suggesting taking proper care of this clearly important guest. Not only did the community readily accept the entrapment and captivity of the stranger, their maliciousness is elevated another degree by their wish to exploit the angel for any kind of personal gain that they can imagine possible. The “angel” is confronted with a procession of pilgrims in search of health, and an admittance fee is duly charged by Pelayo and Elisenda. Everyone’s interest is primarily “What’s in this for me?” When the “befuddled angel” proves unresponsive, “even the most merciful threw stones at him,” and branded him with a branding iron to get a reaction out of him. Then, the irony of the population’s attention shifting to the carnival spider woman from the amazing phenomenon of the winged man is a further indicator of Marquez’ discouragement with what he observes in the superficiality and lack of perception of the masses towards the outsider. Gabriel Marquez is making clear social commentary regarding his understanding of mankind’s inhumane and avaricious tendencies here: ignorance, greed, and superstition prevail over charity and benevolence. With the introduction of the Priest, Father Gonzaga, Gabriel Marquez shows us another facet of his sentiments, this time directly linking his social commentary to the Church. One might expect the reaction of the clergy toward a potentially heaven-sent stranger to be sympathetic and charitable in the extreme. This humble winged outsider might be a supernatural messenger from above, or even the precursor to the second coming of Christ. But Father Gonzaga looks condescendingly upon the “angel” and actively looks for justifications to ostracize the anomalous individual. The priest soon discovers that “he did not understand the language of God (Latin) or know how to greet His ministers.” He observes that the “angel” is disheveled, smelly, and parasitic, and “seen close up he was much too human.” He finally concludes that “nothing about him measured up to the proud dignity of angels.” We are reminded that Pontius Pilate washed his hands of an ambiguous stranger; perhaps close up, Christ too must have been “much too human.” Rather than encourage gentle mercy towards the pathetic but phenomenal being, Father Gonzaga preaches briefly to the crowd about not being credulous, and promises “to write a letter 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 from the higher courts.” Ultimately, “the mail from Rome showed no sense of urgency,” and “might have come and gone until the end of time.” In this “clerical” area of the story, Marquez provides us with a sense of his skepticism regarding the benevolence of a spiritually impoverished Church. “…the Catholic Church, politicians, all, in the mind and in the novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, are swindlers” (Epstein 6). There is no compassion at all towards a pathetic old fellow-being who never even claimed to be an angel, but is just a pitiful fellow traveler. There is an assumed self-righteous superiority on the part of the priest relative to the downtrodden, who “does not understand the language of God (Latin) or know how to greet His ministers.” This haughtiness was not the conduct of Christ with the leper, or Mother Theresa with the wretched of Calcutta, but this is Marquez’ apparent perception of the Church of today. The author and his readers understand that a Father Gonzaga would know the fundamental tenet of the Church: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels, and have not charity, I am become as a sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal…I am n...