Take flight

“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.”

The short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez focuses on an old man who fell from the skies and landed in the courtyard. Pelayo saw the old man injured with enormous wings, who looked filthy. The man becomes an outsider in the village, not speaking the language and being put in a chicken coop as a form of entertainment. Pelayo and his family make a fortune out of him. The old man is examined by a priest, checking in to see whether it’s a real angel. He tells them it can’t be an angel, for it doesn’t speak or look like one. The old man is caged like a zoo animal; they brand him with a hot poker, pluck his wings, and throw things at him. Later in the story, the townspeople move on from the old man and flock to a spider woman. The old man lives in the chicken coop till it collapses and gets moved into the shed. For years, he stays with Pelayo’s family until, one day, he flies away into the sky. 

I remember the feeling of being isolated from my own community.

Like I didn’t fit anywhere, inside or out. 

I used to be part of a dance team. I never felt enough; no matter what I did, I could never make the cut. There was a sort of hierarchy; the same dancers would always get put in the front or have solos. There were groups within groups scheming against each other and trying to compete for the title of best dancer of the week. They even forgot my birthday but remembered everyone else. How convenient. 

I became detached from the art itself and hated dancing for a while. The thing about dancing is that there really is no proclaimed title since everyone’s at different levels and varies in different styles and genres. You can’t simply measure a complicated art form that changes constantly. 

I was great at improv but a novice in ballet.

Hip-hop was my forte, but I still couldn’t do the splits. 

I never had formal training; I couldn’t afford it. 

I practiced dancing through just dance games or in public.

The world was my dance floor; every step I took, the more I learned.

Just like the old man who was stuck in Pelayo’s house until he could physically and mentally leave. He was put into that environment by mere chance. But he tried to do his best in the situation, no matter how much the townspeople viewed him as a mere zoo animal or as a form of entertainment. It was his resilience that helped him manage to survive.

“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, where no one would see him, and at the beginning of December some large, stiff feathers began to grow on his wings, the feathers of a scarecrow, which looked more like another misfortune of decreptitude. But he must have known the reason for those changes, for he was quite careful that no one should notice them, that no one should hear the sea chanteys that he sometimes sang under the stars.” This shows how the old man, when finally achieving freedom by trying to take flight he, leaves his old environment for a new one. When I left the team, it felt like a big weight off my chest, like I could finally breathe and be myself. It was so competitive and judgmental that any wrong move and you could fall off the so-called “hierarchy”. You were seen as the worst dancer in the group. Or not doing two perfect jetés in a row can cause you to get kicked out of performing at the last minute. Over time, I have appreciated the dance form itself, not relying on validation from others in order to be seen as a dancer. I realized my strengths and weaknesses and what I learned from the dance team. I learned to grow to defend myself, to be assertive and not passive. To take a stand for what’s right and not engage in that type of behavior that only brings others down. To rise up, I don’t need to tear down others to find success and happiness. We see this with the angel, who was still kind to Pelayo’s family and child despite it all. He was used for profit but found a way to survive.

“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, befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles that had been placed along the wire. At first they tried to make him eat some mothballs, which, according to the wisdom of the wise neighbor woman, were the food prescribed for angels. But he turned them down, just as he turned down the papal lunches that the pentinents brought him, and they never found out whether it was because he was an angel or because he was an old man that in the end ate nothing but eggplant mush. His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience.”

In conclusion, we all have wings or, in this case, talents/skills that define us. Sometimes, we stand out from the crowd or blend in. It’s how we use those wings to fly and make a difference, just like the old man did. He never gave up, even when he was injured or seen as a spectacle. He kept on going, and even through all the darkness, there was light at the end of the tunnel. We see the old man use his patience to overcome the obstacles. He had hope and was kind, just like a real-life angel.

Works Cited Page:

A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, http://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~cinichol/CreativeWriting/323/MarquezManwithWings.htm. Accessed 23 May 2024.