A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings – Gabriel García Márquez

ഒരു രാത്രി വൈകി വീട്ടിലേക്കു നടന്നുവരുമ്പോൾ പെലായോ ഒരു കാഴ്ച കണ്ടു. അയാളുടെ വീട്ടുമുറ്റത്ത് ഒരു വൃദ്ധൻ വീണുകിടക്കുന്നു. അടുത്തുചെന്നു നോക്കിയപ്പോൾ ആ വൃദ്ധന് ചിറകുകൾ ഉണ്ടെന്നു കണ്ട് പെലായോ അത്ഭുതപ്പെട്ടു. അധികം വൈകാതെ ഈ വൃദ്ധൻ ഒരു ദൈവദൂതൻ ആണെന്ന് നാട്ടുകാരുടെ ഇടയിൽ സംസാരം തുടങ്ങി. ഇതിനുശേഷം നടക്കുന്ന സംഭവങ്ങളാണ് ഈ കഥയിൽ നിങ്ങൾ വായിക്കാൻ പോകുന്നത്.

Summary

• Pelayo finds an old man with wings in his courtyard.
• The man is weak, dirty, and stuck in the mud.
• Pelayo calls his wife, Elisenda, to see him.
• A neighbor says he is an angel.
• They lock him in the chicken coop.
• Their sick child suddenly gets better.
• People come from far away to see the angel.
• They throw food at him and pluck his feathers.
• Pelayo and Elisenda start charging money to see him.
• They become very rich.
• The angel does not fight back or speak clearly.
• A woman who turned into a spider comes to town.
• People like her more than the angel.
• The angel is forgotten and ignored.
• His coop becomes old and smelly.
• He grows weaker and can barely move.
• Pelayo lets him sleep in the shed.
• He survives a hard winter.
• In summer, new feathers grow on his wings.
• He slowly gets stronger.
• Elisenda sees him trying to fly.
• He struggles but finally lifts off.
• He flies higher and higher.
• Elisenda watches him until he is very far away.
• She feels relieved that he is gone.
• Pelayo and Elisenda continue their rich life.
• The town forgets about the angel.
• The angel disappears over the sea.
• No one knows where he went.
• Life goes back to normal for everyone.

Short Questions & Answers

1. Factual Questions (Remembering Information)

1. Who discovered the old man with wings?
   Pelayo found the old man in his courtyard.
2. Where did Pelayo and Elisenda lock the man?
   They locked the old man in their chicken coop.
3. What did the neighbor woman say about the old man?
   The neighbor woman said the old man was an angel who had come for Pelayo and Elisenda’s sick child.
4. What food did the old man prefer to eat?
   The old man ate nothing but eggplant mush.
5. What happened to Pelayo’s child after the old man arrived?
   The child woke up healthy and wanted to eat.

2. Inferential Questions (Understanding & Interpretation)

6. Why did Pelayo and Elisenda decide to charge money to see the old man?
   Pelayo and Elisenda saw an opportunity to make money from people’s curiosity.
7. How did the town’s people treat the old man?
   They treated him like a circus animal, throwing food and plucking his feathers.
8. Why did people lose interest in the old man over time?
   A new attraction, the spider-woman, was more interactive and engaging.
9. How did Pelayo and Elisenda’s life change because of the old man?
   They became wealthy and built a large mansion.
10. What does the doctor find unusual about the old man’s wings?
    The doctor finds them surprisingly natural, wondering why other humans don’t have wings too.

3. Analytical Questions (Critical Thinking & Evaluation)

11. How does the old man’s patience reflect his character?
    The old man’s passive endurance shows resilience and acceptance of suffering.
12. Do you think Pelayo and Elisenda treated the old man ethically? Why or why not?
    No, because they exploited the old man for money without caring for his well-being.
13. Why does Elisenda feel relieved when the old man finally flies away?
    She saw him as an annoyance rather than a miraculous being.
14. What does the old man symbolize in the story?
    The old man represents the clash between the magical and the mundane, as well as human indifference.
15. What is ironic about the townspeople’s reaction to the old man?
    The townspeople expect miracles from the old man but treat him with cruelty and disrespect.

4. Creative & Open-ended Questions (Application & Synthesis)

16. If the old man had spoken clearly, how might the story have changed?
    The townspeople might have treated him differently, perhaps with more respect.
17. How does the story reflect human greed and curiosity?
    People exploit the old man for money, showing selfishness and lack of empathy.
18. Compare the old man’s suffering to the spider-woman’s story. What does this contrast tell us?
    The old man silently endures his pain, while the spider-woman engages with her audience to tell her story.
19. How would the story be different if it were told from the old man’s perspective?
    It would highlight his struggles and the injustice he faces.
20. What lesson can we learn from the story?
    It teaches us about human cruelty, exploitation, and the loss of wonder in everyday life.

Full Text

The light was weak, even at noon. When Pelayo was coming back to the house, it was hard for him to see what was moving and groaning in the rear of the courtyard.
He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man. The man was lying face down in the mud. In spite of his tremendous efforts, the man couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.

Frightened by the sight, Pelayo ran to get Elisenda, his wife. She was putting compresses on their sick child. He took her to the rear of the courtyard. They both looked
at the fallen body.

The man was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth. His pitiful condition seemed that of a drenched great-grandfather. This took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were entangled in the mud.

They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise. In the end they found him familiar. Then they dared speak to him. He answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. They concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship, wrecked by the storm. Then they called in a neighbour woman to see him. All she needed was one look to show them their mistake.“He’s an angel,” she told them.

“He must have been coming for the child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.”

On the following day everyone knew that a flesh-and-blood angel was held captive in Pelayo’s house. Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club. Before going to bed, he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the chicken coop.

A short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat. Then they felt magnanimous. They decided to put the angel on a raft with fresh water and provisions for three days, and leave him to his fate on the high seas.

But when they went out into the courtyard at the first light of dawn, they found the whole neighbourhood in front of the chicken coop having fun with the angel. The visitors were tossing him things to eat through the openings in the coop. It was as if he weren’t a supernatural creature but a circus animal.

The news of the captive angel spread with great rapidity. After a few hours, the courtyard had the bustle of a marketplace. The couple had to call in troops to disperse the mob. They got the idea of fencing in the yard, and charging five cents for admission to see the angel. The curious came from far away. The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health. Pelayo and Elisenda were happy with fatigue. In less than a week they had crammed their rooms with money. Still the line of pilgrims waiting their turn to enter reached beyond the horizon.

The angel was the only one who took no part in his own act. He spent his time trying to get comfortable in his borrowed nest. At first, they tried to make him eat some mothballs. But he ate nothing but eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience. He was quite patient when the hens pecked at him, searching for the parasites in his wings. He was patient again when the cripples pulled out his feathers to touch their limbs with. He remained patient when even the most merciful threw stones at him. After all, they were only trying to get him to rise so that they could see him standing.

It so happened that during those days there arrived in the town a travelling show. The main attraction was a woman who had been changed into a spider by a burst of thunder and lightning. The admission fee to see her was less than the fee to see the angel. So, the people flocked to see her. They were also permitted to ask her all manner of questions about her absurd state.

The owners of the house had no reason to lament. With the money they saved they built a two-storey mansion with balconies and gardens. It also had high netting so that crabs wouldn’t get in during the winter, and iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn’t get in. Pelayo also set up a rabbit warren and gave up his job as a bailiff for good. Elisenda bought some satin pumps with
high heels and many dresses of iridescent silk.

The chicken coop was the only thing that didn’t receive any attention. The dung-heap stench from the coop was turning the new house into an old one.

At first, when the child learned to walk, they were careful that he did not get too close to the coop. But then they began to lose their fears and got used to the smell. Before the child got his second teeth, he’d gone inside the chicken coop to play, as the wires were falling apart. They both came down with the chicken pox at the same time. The doctor who took care of the child couldn’t resist the temptation to listen to the angel’s heart. He found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in the kidneys.

What surprised him most, however, was the logic of his wings. They seemed so natural on that completely human organism. He couldn’t understand why other people didn’t have them too. When the child began school, the sun and rain had caused the collapse of the chicken coop. The angel went dragging himself about here and there like a stray dying man. He seemed to be in so many places at the same time.

He could scarcely eat, and his eyes had also become so foggy that he went about bumping into posts. Pelayo threw a blanket over him and let him sleep in the shed. Only then did they notice that he had a temperature at night. They became alarmed, for they thought he was going to die. And yet he not only survived his worst winter but seemed improved with the first sunny days. He remained motionless for several days in the farthest corner of the courtyard. At the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings. They looked like the feathers of a scarecrow.

One morning Elisenda was cutting some bunches of onions for lunch when a wind blew into the kitchen. Then she went to the window and found the angel in his first attempts at flight. These were so clumsy that he was on the point of knocking the shed down as he couldn’t get a grip on the air. But then, he did manage to gain altitude. Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him,
when she watched him pass over the last houses. He was holding himself up in some way with the risky flapping of a senile vulture.

She kept watching him even when she was through cutting the onions. She kept on watching until it was no longer possible for her to see him. He was no longer an annoyance in her life but an imaginary dot on the horizon of the sea.