Brooklyn Sightings: “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"

Last week, my undergraduate creative writing class discussed Gabriel García Márquez’s "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings.” We explored the basics: character, conflict, the over-trod three-act plot structure (exposition-crisis-resolution). Breaking stories down into such pedestrian terms, even in an inquisitive “how does he do it” kind of way often feels reductive. Like trying to nail an ethereal, very old man with enormous wings to the dusty teacher’s desk where a dusty paper clip ha

d sat for weeks.

As we tried to figure out what to make of Marquez’ old man who is so drawn into himself and unaware of his magnificence, he takes no interest in his audience even as he is being dissected by the bailiff Pelayo or his wife Elisenda, the befuddled local priest, the local doctor, or the townspeople, I began to feel as if Márquez himself lay in front of us on the unwashed desk, enduring our indelicate prying at his technique.

As always, Márquez’s language captivated my students’ attention. They laughed in good ways and at the right times. Some clearly felt both the style and the story, felt the story shift when the townspeople move on to the newer spectacle of a young girl transformed into a spider after disobeying her father by staying out dancing all night. The spider girl explains her plight and lets the townspeople feed her meatballs. They can easily understand her story with its clear, digestible moral (obey your parents). Her explainable lesson serves them.

But it’s precisely what can’t be explained that makes the indifferent “very old man” exist. His story serves no one.

In his part in the story, the elements of “magical realism” emphasize communal wonder. His lack of communication keeps the conflict blissfully external. We don’t get mired in any single character's perspective. The townspeople’s communal fascination with very old men and spider girls echoes the act of reading together a work as captivating and beautiful as Marquez’s. Those fresh observations–the female student whose own pain made the spider girl’s predicament stand out (do women always get treated badly? she sighed), another who wanted to know the stylistic difference between Márquez and J.K. Rowling (a lot), the surprising question “should we laugh at priests?” (why not? they laugh at themselves) become part of my experience of the story.

I asked them to write about something they found unexpectedly as they walked through their neighborhood (such as Pelayo finding the very old man in his courtyard). I said it could be anything: dollar bills, a child’s toy thrown out of a carriage, a stray or hurt animal, a forgotten book, a single earring, a reefer, a flyer. They insisted they had never found anything Especially money. I found their reaction (which was really resistance to picking up the pen) remarkable. Writing is about getting into the habit of noticing, I think I said. Recording. And remembering.

Then, they wrote because they had to.

Resolution. Denouement. We charted the story’s end. The very old man flies off without explanation, wings beating, leaving Elisenda and readers gaping in indifference or admiration. “I invent nothing,” Márquez said. “People always praise my imagination, but I believe I am a terrible realist. Everything I invent, was already there in reality.”

Gabriel García Márquez, Flickr Creative Commons/Secretaria de Cultura

The students left the seventh floor classroom, at best having felt the impression of alighting for a while in a world where surprise-shaped coincidences bring people together. Or, even better, believing that the act of trying to craft their own words in this way has communal value. Most likely, they were thinking of getting to work or their next class or the weight of an unfinished project for a class with more relevance to their major.

Two things happened in my neighborhood the week after I taught this story. First, because it is October, Márquez’s spider girl turned up on a door step on Verandah Place (see photo above). And then, I found a rolled up dollar bill on the sidewalk and thought of those students so certain they never found anything, that drawing together of my experiences becoming a connection of much more value than the dollar bill. Perhaps like Márquez insists, these coincidences and connections are not “magic” but “realism” and remarkable if nothing else as markers of our days.