Magical Realism and the "Other" in Garcia Marquez's Angel Story

Introduction: Magical Realism and the Post-Colonial Other

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings is a work written in the author's signature mode of magical realism: the story has the logic of a fable or a dream, even though it is narrated in the most matter-of-fact way possible. In this brief story, told with almost no directly quoted dialogue, we learn of the sudden appearance and sudden disappearance of the title character — who is, quite literally, what the title describes — in a small South American seaside village. Through a close reading of several elements of the story — the descriptions of the old man and what is presented as the literal truth of the narrative, the reactions of the local priest Father Gonzaga and the implied religious elements, and the comparison with the spider girl in the second half of the story — this essay argues that Garcia Marquez may be suggesting a potential post-colonial reading of his brief tale by establishing the old man as an archetypal "Other."

Language, Physical Difference, and the Construction of Otherness

The direct descriptions of the old man within the story seem to establish his otherness distinctly. Leaving aside for the moment the question of his wings — the most obvious sign of his otherness, but also the story's most clearly magical element — it is worth noting that the most common sign of difference among people is present here: language. The old man does not speak the Spanish of Pelayo and his wife Elisenda, or of the other villagers. We learn this in the second paragraph: "Then they dared speak to him, and he answered in an incomprehensible dialect with a strong sailor's voice. That was how they skipped over the inconvenience of the wings and quite intelligently concluded that he was a lonely castaway from some foreign ship wrecked by the storm" (Garcia Marquez 1).

It is worth noting that language is here connected by Garcia Marquez with the more obvious physical sign of otherness — the wings. Indeed, the "incomprehensible dialect" spoken by the old man is given as the chief reason why Pelayo and Elisenda are able to "skip over the inconvenience of the wings." This moment rewards closer examination. Garcia Marquez clearly intends it to be humorous: he is not mocking the villagers, but rather offering a glimpse into the hard realities of their lives, showing how they respond to an utterly implausible event with the most straightforward practicality they can summon. It is also possible that Garcia Marquez is suggesting the couple are actively seeking a reason to ignore the wings. The old man's "strong sailor's voice" reminds them of something familiar, yet it also seems plausible that a being who had to fly and communicate over the noise of wind and ocean might very well develop the same loud, carrying tones that sailors use.

The old man's otherness is, of course, of an entirely different order than that of a foreigner — yet the cultural understanding of foreignness is generally the first framework people reach for when confronting the idea of otherness at all. That Garcia Marquez intends the old man as a kind of archetypal "Other" becomes evident in the two immediate explanations offered next: one supernatural, when the neighbor woman (in the story's only instance of directly quoted dialogue) opines that the old man is an angel, and one far more sinister, when the same neighbor woman suggests that the villagers "club him to death" (Garcia Marquez 1). The actual response — locking the old man in the chicken coop, making him a half-prisoner and half-animal — confirms his otherness by marking him as either not quite human or not quite fit for the society of the villagers.

It is worth recalling that "otherness" does not necessarily imply inferiority. In practice, a society may construct its archetypal Other as inferior in many respects, but otherness can also carry a superior or transcendent aspect. One might think of the way Native Americans have been depicted not only as savage but also as a heroic ideal of freedom or virtue, as when the Boston Tea Partiers dressed in Native American costume. An actual angel, for example, would be entirely alien to human experience without being considered sub-human. Garcia Marquez remains deliberately ambiguous about whether the old man is intended to be understood as an angel — indeed, most of the physical details (the elderly body, the smell, the missing feathers, the parasites on the wings) suggest poverty rather than otherworldly transcendence.

Father Gonzaga and the Religious Dimensions of Otherness

The question of the old man's possibly angelic nature — first raised by the neighbor — is expanded when the local priest Father Gonzaga arrives to investigate. Here we see that the supernatural claims of religion hold little real interest for a religious official when they appear before him in an inconvenient form. Instead, Father Gonzaga responds to the old man in terms of his own social station in the community, and in terms of the old man's failure to recognize it. Garcia Marquez tells us that "the parish priest had his first suspicion of an imposter when he saw that he did not understand the language of God or know how to greet His ministers" (Garcia Marquez 2). In other words, the old man's failure to know Latin — then the official language of the Catholic Church — or more particularly his failure to show respect to a parish priest, is the primary reason the priest doubts this could truly be an angel.

The priest's response is cautious: he suspends judgment and volunteers to contact his superiors at the Vatican, acknowledging that the old man's presence constitutes some kind of supernatural event, while refusing to sanction anything miraculous. His reaction is largely governed by the old man's "smell of the outdoors" and "parasites," which are seen as not "measur[ing] up to the proud dignity of angels" (Garcia Marquez 2). There is considerable irony in this response. In a religion supposedly based on the teachings of Christ — who preached compassion for the poor — these signs of human poverty (uncleanliness, parasites, lack of physical dignity) are treated by the priest as grounds for suspicion and distaste. Whatever we conclude about Father Gonzaga's reaction, it is difficult to describe it as Christian in any straightforward sense.

Conclusion: Otherness, Symbolism, and the Reader

By the end of the story, it is clear that Garcia Marquez is toying with the traditional function of symbolism. Ordinarily a reader expects that an obvious symbol, like a very old man with enormous wings, will carry some discernible meaning — in other words, we are like the villagers in the story, who prefer the spider girl precisely because the "lesson" of her story is so legible. She speaks the same language and tells the story herself. In some sense, however, the spider girl is not truly "other": she has a recognized role within the cultural context of the story, and her narrative fits neatly into the community's established moral framework in a conservative South American society.

The old man, by contrast, is the perfect Other: he does not speak the same language, and no one in the story knows what his presence is supposed to mean. As a result, Garcia Marquez places the reader in an unusual position. We are confronted with the complete otherness of the old man, yet we can also observe how the ordinary people in the story respond to him — and recognize that their responses differ from what we might hope for. We are permitted to share the position of post-colonial otherness while simultaneously sharing the villagers' hunger for symbolic meaning. Garcia Marquez, however, allows us only to ponder what it means to be denied that obvious meaning — and in doing so, implicates us in the very interpretive failure he has been examining all along.

Works Cited

Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings." Accessed 15 April 2014.