Tuesday, October 8, 2013
Transformation and "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings"
During today, we had a difficult and complex discussion about various aspects of "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." We considered a number of topics: 1) The Role and Symbolism of the Angel, 2) The Role and Symbolism of the Spider Woman, 3) The Transformation or Lack thereof in the any of the main characters or townspeople, 4) The Purpose of Characteristics of Magical Realism in the story, and 5) Ideas behind what it means to call the story "A Children's Fable." Choose one of these concepts or another concept of your choice and explain how your view of it changed during the critical conversation, after it, and in later reflection. How did this affect your understanding/interpretation of the story overall? Please respond thoughtfully with both analysis and personal reflection in AT LEAST TEN well-written sentences.
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The Role of the Spider Woman
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read about the Spider Woman, I thought she was irrelevant towards the main purpose of the story. The story was of course, about an old man with enormous wings, not a spider woman, so I thought little of her appearance in the story. Briefly, a thought occurred that maybe she was important; you would not include the mindless tress in a story unless it helped describe the setting or it was vital to the story, just as the Spider Woman. Coming back to the conversation today, my fellow classmates brought in ideas that I haven't even entertained. Someone said that maybe it was to symbolize the the that people treat the disabled, or anything strange to our nature, as freaks. That is a very likely true and something that seems clearer to me as I type my response. The author wouldn't include that Spider Woman without some inclination to her importance. I think that now I see the story differently because of this. If this was to be true, what does the angel represent than? I think that this realization has now opened my eyes to what the rest of the story can represent, or symbolize as far as who we are as people and theme wise
The old man was very symbolic and could stand for a lot of different things. The most obvious one is that he is an angel. I believe he is an angel, just a real life representation of what one what be like. The average perception of an angel is strong, young, and radiating, a holy being to be respected. The old man has none of these qualities, he is old, weak, has broken dirty wings, and is definitely not holy. He is locked up in a chicken cage where the villagers throw rocks at him, when they should be praying to him. I think the story is showing that life is not made of fairytales and sparkles. The angel is the moral of the story, that other fairytales are wrong. Also I think that in real life humans found an angel they would probably do thing similar to in the story. First testing it until it was almost dead then throwing it into a zoo, no respect for the unknown.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the angel symbolized the unknown and fear of the unknown. All of the people in the story were freaked out by the angel at first and the fact that they put him in a cage chicken coop showed that they didn't accept him. Also, when they had people come pay to see him, it showed that they didn't see him as a human, but an animal who was inferior to them. The angel also showed that even when something is generally believed to be divine or superior, we are afraid of it if we have no previous experience with it. The fact that the mother was afraid that the baby would get hurt by going near the angel showed this. I thought that the angel could have also symbolized how religion is slowly becoming less popular as more people become atheist. I thought that because the angel's wings were deteriorating and dying and the wings of an angel are really the only thing that separates angels form humans. Also, since the angel was old, and old people are generally close to death, or closer than young people anyway, it could mean that religion was on its way to becoming non-existent or at least less popular. When we were talking about this, it made me see the story much less literally. At first, when I was reading the story, I took it too literally. Now, I think, I'm beginning to see the story in a more metaphorical and symbolic way.
ReplyDeleteThe old man is an angel and he represents morals and being good, and caring about other people. He was sent to this evil world to try to open up the people's eyes to how immoral they were. The people are so morally corrupted that they cannot relate to the angel. That's because the angel has a Norwegian dialect. "With the money they saved they built a two-story mansion with balconies and gardens and high netting so that crabs wouldn't get in during the winter and with iron bars on the windows so that angels wouldn't get in." The people are really desperate not to let any more angels into their lives. They don't want to face themselves and how evil they are. Being moral is a nuisance to them. They think that the angel is haughty and that he thinks that he is above the people. they think that people who try to have good morals think that they are above everyone.
ReplyDeleteMix between the Angel and Spider woman.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read the story I thought the spider woman was irrelevant and she confused my thought process, or/and where I thought the story was headed. I also didn’t see any similarities between her and the Angel, but during the class discussion I started to see where she was connected in the story. The Angel was put on display for everybody’s amusement like he was a circus act. The spider woman was also put on display for everybody’s entertainment and was a circus act. Even though there is a clear link with both characters, they are very different in more depths. For example; The Angel didn’t want the spotlight on him, but the spider woman seemed to crave the attention. The whole book is confusing because each character and sentence needs special attention and dissection to better understand them. At a first glance it’s hard to find links between the characters and ideas. It’s also hard to grasp what the characters and objects are supposed to symbolize, if anything. The story can also be interrupted in many ways, so opinions and ideas can be contradicted and rethought out.
I could have sworn you said a short blog post.... I think that spider woman drew me out of the main story. I could see how she could be good in a story that was only about her and how she became a spider woman, but in this case I think it was completely distracting. I could see how adding another "freak" to the story would help show that the people didn't really care that he was an angle, just different, but he didn't need to go into such detail. Another point on how she was distracting was the fact that we all thought it was important to analyze her. Although if this short tory was a novel I think she would be excellent and relevant to the story. She might have a deeper meaning to her, but I think not. She also drew me away from the realness of the story, I could believe a very old man with enormous wings but not a woman who disobeyed her parents and was cursed. She didn't really have much of a character to her either just a backstory. I think if he left out the thing about the meat balls the charecter would seem more real. I think that She was irrelevant to the story.
ReplyDeleteAs a child growing up Children’s stories were major parts in my life. To be able to learn how to dream, what is right or wrong, and how I developed my own voice all came from children’s stories. It was simple to grasp the truths from the children’s stories and move on. Plus every great child’s story is enjoyed by all ages. During are class discussion when Gregory stated that the stories subtitle was that it was “A Children’s Fable” it was difficult to understand. By no means did I see “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” as child’s story. It wasn’t simple enough in my mind to grasp the truths but as I continued to focus and listen to the conversation grow in class I came to a conclusion. I realized the simple truth and feeling was that in society people tend to act irrationally when a change occurs that they are unfamiliar with. The people in the town weren’t familiar with the man with wings so they made their own stories and excuses up of what he was, used and abused him to their needs. That was the simple part to comprehend; people are scared of anything different or unknown to them. The second thing I came to is how much children stories have changed. The stories I grew up surrounded by were very simple almost too simple making it sickening now. Stories such as this one and the original of remix children stories may be dark but had more depth and joy in them I believe. This made me look through the story with a different mindset in ply and to see that the nothing was really superfluous. Even though I may have not figured out all the elements of the story I know the chase to find them makes this a great story.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the reason that “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” is considered a Children’s Fable even though it is primarily meant for Adults. I think that the story is meant to make adults look back on the gruesomeness of fairy tales and their morals. To a child the story goes right over them, but the adults reading the story will have a different experience. It makes them look back upon many of the fables they heard and recited as children. One of these gruesome stories is Ring-Around-The-Rosy. As a child you danced in a circle chanting the words believing that they were just rhymes, but the truth about the chant is much darker. It’s about the bubonic plague. Also many fairy tales that are common today came from Brothers Grimm, which were fairy tales that were used to scare children into behaving. “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings,” makes adults notice the subtle signs that this fable may actually have an underlying horrible truth.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read this story, I thought that the angel symbolized fear of the unknown. After all, this angel just appeared in the small, costal town and caused bewilderment. The people of the town treated the angel like an animal, even locking it in a chicken coup. In addition, the townspeople would constantly ask a village elder type figure for advice on how to deal with the angel, as if they were afraid of making a mistake. But when we discussed "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", my outlook on the angel changed. Instead of thinking that the people were afraid of the angel, I thought that the people were simply expecting more. They didn't expect some old man with ragging wings inducing petty-miracles, they expected a fantastic being. When the spider woman came to town, the people of the town forgot about the angel and flocked to her. It's not that she was better or more significant than the angel, it's that the angel simply wasn't beautiful enough. After reflecting our discussions, I decided that these people who worship angels are hypocrites, and that they don't really care about the quality of something as much as its outside appearance. I believe that the angel was a very significant part of the story, as he gave insight into the seemingly one-dimensional characters around him.
ReplyDeleteI think that the old man could symbolize multiple things. The most obvious would be an angel of course. It could also symbolize other things to. I think that the angel represents the unknown of people and what we think. I think that because we depict an angel of being beautiful and glowing and white, not weak and bad looking. But he could also symbolize patience, strength, and kindness. He represents patience because when he was put in a chicken coop and burned and people pulled his feathers, he didn't retaliate and didn't try to hurt anyone. That also shows kindness because what the humans did to him, he could of taken the baby, but instead he helped the baby, and made the baby better. I think that the angel represents so many things, and could be so many things. But overall I think that it represents patience, since he showed so much to the town people and in the end helped them instead of hurting then.
ReplyDeleteThe Role and Symbolism of the Spider Woman. This symbol was something that I did not even consider before the class discussion. Even during the class discussion I did not pay much attention to this until I was told that this story was a children's novel because every children's story has a moral and the spider woman could represent a moral of paying respect to your parents and obeying. I think that the spider women is a symbol for respecting.
ReplyDeleteAt first, I thought that the angel was a fallen angel that had been rejected. After our class discussions, however, i changed my viewpoint. I think that the angel/old man could symbolize many things in this story. He could represent how peoples belief in mythical/religious being or spirits has declined over the centuries. He could also represent poverty in the world with how his wings were infested with maggots and he was in a bedraggled state. Not looking or appearing the part of the mighty angel from heaven at all. He/She usually are depicted as majestic beings radiating good and power. This guy....not so much. Angels usually command respect from people while this one just lay there patiently while others threw rocks at him. Even at the moment I am not completely sure whether or not this guy is really an angel. However, I think that he represents the human faith/belief in a greater power of some kind. At one point it was great and everyone believed in it and the angels were majestic, but now not many people actually believe so the angels don't really appear as we would picture an angel appearing.
ReplyDeleteOur discussion transformed my thoughts about the role and symbolism of the Angel. After reading “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” I thought of the angel in a two dimensional way. I knew he had meaning but I did not know exactly what. We discussed ways in which the angel played a part in the story. There were theories about how the angel could be good, bad or neither. In my mind, this made the angel a more “round” character. I began to think that the angel was a sponge cleaning off the grime of every day life in this small town. The angel may have been a demon in disguise, due to its human nature and the fact that it did not speak Latin. This gave way to the fact of how close this could be to every day life today and the unwillingness to accept someone different. Overall my opinions of the angel changed after the discussion and I began to see the many different ways the angel could play in the story.
ReplyDeleteThis story really made me reconsider what I had previously thought a children's fable was. I thought that the moral of a children's story was always very clear. In my experience, there has always been a big resolution and the story tied up all of the loose ends. A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings is not what I would have previously considered as a story for children. There was not a clear moral. It was not as simple as what I read as a child. The story itself was very complex and metaphoric. I would not have understood it as a child. It may be a book that I would read to children, but I would not expect them to deeply understand it. This is not a book that I would have immediately known was written for children.
ReplyDeleteFirst off, I believe the old man symbolized an angel obviously, because he had enormous wings and he was peacefully and magnanimous. He was brought into the chicken coop and basically tortured, but still remained calm. The first thought that came into my mind was that then Angel was coming to save the kid, but then they tortured him so I was confused. I also believe the angel symbolized curiosity because I don't think people in this village were used to seeing creatures like this and didn't really know what it was doing there. When I saw the title I thought the "enormous wings" symbolized another thing, maybe like, the man was compassionate or loving or even lonely. So overall I'm still wondering what the main meaning of the man is, I'm sure different people think different things about the angel so you can't come up with a certain answer.
ReplyDeleteI think the symbolism of the angel is very important because it shows the difference about how humans imagine things and how they actually are. Now, of course we don't knows if the short story depicts angels as they really are or if angels are actually real. But the story does show how humans react to the idea and possibility of being wrong. The people in the town treated the angel like an animal. If the angel had been more magnificent and beautiful like people imagine them, I'm sure the angel would have been treated differently. He was a circus attraction to them. The author shows how narrow-minded religion is because the priest tried to speak Latin to the angel and the angel didn't speak it. I think it's obvious Latin is not the language of God considering it was invented by humans. I think the author was making a point about how arrogant the human race is, that we think everything we do is Godly. As soon as the priest figured out the angel didn't speak Latin he warned the people that it could be demonic, giving the impression that if its not how we pictured it it is a work of the devil.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t consider the significance of the spider woman when I was reading the text but when it became a large focus point of our discussion it got me thinking as to what the author intended by adding her to the story. Now that I reflect on her purpose in the story it makes more sense in a complicated way. The people went and saw the angel because he was different and peculiar but they could not understand why he was there or why he was so tattered. He was of no use to the people because he could only perform minor miracles and there was no clear reason as to why he was there. But when the spider woman was introduced the people were interested as well, only this time they could understand the woman’s pain because she had a clear backstory that explained her punishment. “A spectacle like that, full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals.” With this idea that simpler things are more commonly adored because of their convenience, the author could be making a jab at children's fables. This book was written in 1955 and parents from that era would tell their children simple stories with clear morals. Gabriel García Márquez might have noticed this and decided to make his own children’s fable but made it more complex and dark than any of the popular children’s stories.
ReplyDeleteThe story was very confusing at first, but the class made some very good insights. It was evident that the story was deeply allegorical when I read it, but I got no clear message from it. In class we discussed whether or not the man was an angel. I think part of the point of the story was to tell us that we can't know what an angel really is. The story uses fantastical exaggerations to convey its message – the "angel" could symbolize "good" in the world, like people we might call angelic. (This ties in to our morality discussions.) The man is obviously the most important element of the story: it's named after him. Much of the story is spent on physical descriptions, and I think Gabriel García Márquez chose every detail for a reason.(wasn't Gabriel an angel?) The story left me with a feeling that it had a very specific metaphor, like Animal Farm, and I kept expecting you (Gregory) to tell us the "right" answer in class. All humans are sometime immoral and judgmental and mistreat virtuous beings. The actions of the humans in the story were less appalling to me when I thought of the story as a metaphor for universal actions taking place over a long period of time.
ReplyDeleteIn "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings", Márquez uses elements of allegory to describe the superficial way in which the people see the old man. The old man has wings and arrives looking weak and delicate; as a result, leads the people to respond harshly because the old man seems dependent and different. Different because the angel doesn't represent the proud dignity of "angels", which pressured the people to contemplate what their faith really was. None of the people showed a true "confident " connection with God anyways, so the people easily gave up understanding something complex. The fact that this story is labeled, "A Children's Fable," made me think of innocence and deeper into the significance of both the angel and spider woman, and how that affected how the people stood in the story.
ReplyDeleteIn the short story, The Old Man With Enormous Wings, I thought the role and symbolism of the "angel type thing" was sort of unknown. The title of this story is "The Old Man With Enormous Wings," the title is not "The Angel," and in the story they never had proof that it was. It could have been some other type of creature that came from the sky. But the reaction of the people, and the way they reacted towards it, was very harsh. They would throw rocks at it to see if it would awaken. They treated it as an animal locked in a cage. It became a show, that people paid for to come see it. The family with the sick baby thought it came to help the baby. But it caused a lot of suffering and annoyance to the family by being in their house all the time. It, was also suffering. Once the spider woman came, everyone didn't take interest in the "angel," anymore. It suffered even more, but the symbolism of this angel—I'm not exactly sure of. It could have been anything really, but not knowing what it was and why...sort of made the story confusing.
ReplyDeleteGrowing up, fables were a major part of my children's book experience; particularly dark ones. So, when I first heard that this was a children's fable I was not surprised. Children's fable does not in any since mean for children. It means that the child who is being read this story will receive some kind of do-good message. In this case maybe it was be nice to all creatures. But adults are the people really targeted in these stories. Authors purposely sugar-coat certain aspects of stories to make it appropriate for children but for adults, if you look hard enough, there are so many sub-fables in each story/fable. For example, just after leaving class, I really thought through the judgement fable. How humans, if something doesn't look exactly as we picture it, we throw it out as garbage. Narrow-minded came up a lot in class, and it's coming to mind to me write now as a write this. But I truly think that the other knew that humans would debate this essay and what the angel stood for. This would show what our version of an angel should look like and how we, by discussing this, are being narrow minded.
ReplyDeleteThe role of the Angel:
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read the story, my initial thought was that the angel was in purgatory. I thought that the angel was an old man who had recently died, and was stuck waiting for Gods approval to Heaven. But after today and yesterday’s discussion I would say different. At one point in the conversation someone brought up the correlation between the child and the angel. Before I had thought that maybe the angel and the child were related when the town’s women said that the angel had come to take the boy. But I had dismissed it with the thought that the woman was just saying this with no real fact; the way the priest later did in the story. After the discussion I would say that the angel had come for the child. I don’t think the angel had come to lead the boy to heaven, but instead heal the child of his sickness. This is seen in the story when the boy quickly regains heath after the angel’s arrival, and then again later in the story when both the characters get sick at the same time.
The angle in a very old man with enormous wings represents the narrow mindedness of humans. I think this because the angle does not appear as angles that we have developed in our mind do. This angle has black wings, very human, an old man, and overall does not have a very angelic appearance. However, even me saying this is ironic because I have never seen an angel, only pictures in stories. In the same way the people in the story and putting him to the standards of an angel in their head but really they have never even seen an angel.This sort of connects to modern day society in the sense off the media holding people to certain standard that they have not yet seen.
ReplyDeleteI thought it was really interesting how it was a "fable for children". It never really occured to me that it could have been a story for kids. I thought that if a kid would read then it would be hard to understand, or they wouldn't fully understand it. Now, I realize that childrens stories are most of the time very dark, and have a deeper meaning, but you don't understand that as a child. I didn't understand why authors would make the story so dark, but I guess it was to show you to not do a particular thing. I also realized that a lot of older stories seem to be a lot darker then the modern day stories. Today we disscused about how Disney changed dark stories into happier ones, and I think that is the main reason why I thought modern day stories are more happier. I think that this doesn't just happen in books, it also happens in songs too like "ring around the rosie".
ReplyDeleteThe significance of the angle in the story. Wether he is an angle or not will depend the view of this story. If he is an angle it is almost a sin to treat him like that. If he is a "freak" the way the people think he is its less morally wrong still wrong but not as much. Now if he were a demon the way some thought then it would almost feel needed for you to keep him there and not let him out. From the way the story played out I am almost certain that the old man is an angle. He was found next to a sick child who both seemed to be connected. In the class discussion they brought up his patience with everything and how that resembles the actions of an angle and that was convincing me more and more that the angle was not properly treated. If in the end he was a angle you could see that if the town people knew that things would have been different. It all depends if the old man was or wasn't a angle.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the discussion of what the moral of the story was was very interesting. I didn't think that the moral was very straight forward, however. I thought that the moral might be about respect and people's values. Maybe the point of having the angel was to bring out people's personalities, possibly. For example: many people went to see the angel and didn't actually care about how their behavior affected the angel in any way. All that the tourists cared about was what they thought. This affected the angel in many ways. He deteriorated and was also kept in with the chicken, which showed that nobody valued him. This was called a child's tale, and but I think that there were many things in this story to understand that we're beyond the understanding of children. Possibly, this story was not intended for children.
ReplyDeleteI believe that the story was a metaphor for the way that we treat outsiders as a society. The villagers were all against just letting this thing roam around and have free will and instead contained it into a chicken coup. We don’t literally pin outsiders into a chicken coup but we do restrain them from living where they may want or from doing he things that they might want to do on a normal basis. And even in the story they assumed that the old man is a castaway meaning that they also assumed that he was an outsider to start out. There is no interpretation to do right there. They/We treated/treat the Old Man/outsiders like dirt when we thought that he/they were from another culture. That is as direct as can be.
ReplyDeleteI think the role of the Spider Woman was kind of important to the story. It did kind of drifted away from the story but it was beneficial. I think the spider women was just an example of an idol. Without her, people would be still kind of admiring the angel. Since the spider woman did something bad, that can mess with the reader's mind why the angel is treated this way and why they paid more attention to the spider woman. At first, I thought if the spider woman did something bad, then the angel did something bad as well to be in the state he was. Then, other opinions came along. I thought these people had some kind of infatuation with the angel and the spider woman. Think about it, what would really happen if, for an example, a dog with frog legs became the new thing around, then what would happen to the spider woman? What would then happen to the angel? I still haven't came to a precise answer... yet.
ReplyDelete