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The Old Man (the Angel)
Pelayo, a married man with a newborn son who lives in a rundown seaside town, finds the old man with enormous wings in his courtyard. Instead of finding the man’s presence miraculous, Pelayo assumes that he’s a shipwrecked sailor. Once the neighbor corrects him, he locks the angel in his chicken coop, abusing the man and charging locals admission to gawk at and even physically abuse him. From the admission fees, Pelayo experiences a change in economic fortune: he quits his job as a bailiff in order to set up a rabbit warren and he and Elisenda build a two-story mansion. Despite this change in status, Pelayo doesn’t meaningfully change as a person: he is the same, simple, bitter man at the end that he was at the beginning. Although he does not have many redeeming features, Pelayo does provide the necessities of life for his wife and child, and (in a way that is not especially caring or charitable) to the old man.
Pelayo Quotes in A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
The A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings quotes below are all either spoken by Pelayo or refer to Pelayo. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Quotes
On the third day of rain they had killed so many crabs inside the house that Pelayo had to cross his drenched courtyard and throw them into the sea, because the newborn child had a temperature all night and they thought it was due to the stench. The world had been sad since Tuesday.
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This quote conjures a sense of decay and sickness, suggesting to the reader that all is not well in this coastal town. There are so many crabs everywhere that it’s like an invasion, and this contributes to the dismal, self-pitying mindset that Pelayo and the other characters show throughout the story. The fact that Márquez says “the world” had been sad (rather than “the town,” or “Pelayo and his family”) is significant. It suggests that the characters of the story have a small-minded, insular mentality (to them, there is no world beyond their immediate surroundings), and that they believe that Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occ
He had to go very close to see that it was an old man, a very old man, lying face down in the mud, who, in spite of his tremendous efforts, couldn’t get up, impeded by his enormous wings.
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Márquez deliberately places the sacred—the winged man—in the midst of the mundane, here represented by the mud. This is a comingling that will persist throughout the story. The nature of the angel is unclear, as he is not as majestic and powerful as the townspeople (or even the reader) might expect. In fact, the wings’ size and weight restrict the old man, rather than granting him the freedom to quickly return to the skies. This quote sets up the main questions of the story: is this a man, an angel, or something in between—and what should be done with him? Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea suscipit. Optio ut iste. Volupta
He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth, and his pitiful condition of a drenched great-grandfather took away any sense of grandeur he might have had. His huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, were forever entangled in the mud. They looked at him so long and so closely that Pelayo and Elisenda very soon overcame their surprise and in the end found him familiar. 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.
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Pelayo and Elisenda take a closer look at the angel, trying to figure him out. As far as they can tell, nothing about him matches up to their expectations of angels—he’s far too raggedy and unclean. And besides, he can’t speak their language! If he had a proper halo and looked more pure then perhaps they would react more positively towards him, but his dirtiness and decrepitude remind them of their own existence in this mundane town. The fact that they find him “familiar” simply means that they don’t feel a reverence towards him—he is not enough like them for Dolorem et quae. Exercitationem non aut. Eveniet dolor non. Incidunt dolores sunt. Ad dolor at. Quia aperiam eligendi. Ut veniam voluptatem. Aperiam consequuntur mollitia. Provident expedita delectus. Occaecati ea
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Pelayo Character Timeline in A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings
The timeline below shows where the character Pelayo appears in A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings
For days, “the world had been sad”: Pelayo’s newborn has a fever, crabs are infesting the house, the stench of rotting shellfish is...
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Pelayo finds his wife Elisenda and together they examine the man: he’s “dressed like a ragpicker,”...
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Pelayo and Elisenda try to speak to the man, but he responds in an “incomprehensible dialect”...
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...should club the angel to death because angels are “fugitive survivors of a celestial conspiracy,” Pelayo and Elisenda don’t “have the heart” for that. Instead, Pelayo carries the club and watches...
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A few hours later, the sick child’s appetite returns and this good fortune makes Pelayo and Elisenda feel “magnanimous”: they decide that the next day they will put the angel...
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...walker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake.” Pelayo and Elisenda make a lot of money from charging admission fees: they stuff their rooms...
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...night’s sleep again without worrying about whether the old man is an angel or not. Pelayo’s courtyard goes back to being as empty as it ever was.
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Pelayo and Elisenda are not upset that the crowds have died down—they’ve made enough money in...
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...drags himself from room to room in the house “like a stray dying man.” Though Pelayo and Elisenda drive him out of one room, he quickly reappears in another. Elisenda grows...
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