A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings -Un Hombre Muy Viejo Con Unas Alas Enormes

 I found a copy of this story with both the English and Spanish version side by side. I read the Spanish version out loud to myself, and whenever I came across a word or phrase I did not know, I referred to the English version. This short story not only helped me improve my vocabulary, but it also helped me take in the information stated in the text. Once I finished the Spanish version, I read the story again in English to test how much information I obtained while reading in Spanish. Marques is a very talented writer, so some words and sentences were tricky to translate between languages. It is not possible to make a word by word translation of the text. This story is about a man named Pelayo who finds an old, filthy, disoriented and homeless looking man with enormous wings in his courtyard while killing crabs. Sparked with curiosity, he immediately notifies his wise neighbor about his finding. She concludes that the man is actually an angel whose mission was to take their ill child to heaven. Once the child of Elisenda and Pelayo recover, they show pity on the unknown organism. Father Gonzaga, the priest, does not believe that this man is an angel, yet people come from far and wide to visit the "angel." Pelayo and Elisenda come up with an idea to form an admissions fee to visit the angel. Even though many people demonstrate cruelty when mocking him, plucking his feathers, and throwing stones at him, he still pays no attention to anyone. Eventaully, less people show up due to the rumors of a supernatural spider women elsewhere, but Pelayo and Elisenda have silently become rich.  They built a huge mansion and believed the angel was going to die soon enough. Nevertheless the angel, clumsy and disoriented, gets up and begins to fly until he is out of sight of Elisenda, who was cutting onions in her kitchen at the time. The plot within the story explains human curiosity and patience in a fictional yet creative way. This story gives a whole new perspective on letting nature run its course, and how empathy and patience go hand in hand, yet human nature such as curiosity and judgement interfere with morality. The first thing I thought of when finishing the story was how the curiosity of the people was a temporary state of mind; it faded off as soon as a more interesting figure was introduced. Some may think that empathy was the major theme here, but it was the replacement of empathy with pity that I found the most important. The misconception between pity and empathy is the idea I want to dig deeper and learn more about. 

Comment yours thoughts on the story! :) 

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