Enormous Wings

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“In the news today another teen sets the blame to their parents on Insta-Twitting-Face-Space for being arrested for stealing a car, which the teen justified because they had to have a nice car which mom and dad failed to provide . More on the news at 11:00.” Is it a possibility doing what it takes to preserve one’s self has been around since long before today’s youth was delivered upon this earth? In the short story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings author Gabriel Garcia Márquez brings forth how indifferent humans can be towards one another when it comes to their own self-preservation. Márquez conveys this using characters, setting, and symbolism. To begin with Márquez uses vividly created characters to introduce the readers to the abnormal. Márquez writes: They both looked at the fallen body with mute stupor. He was dressed like a ragpicker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and a very few teeth in…show more content…
Márquez writes: The most unfortunate of invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood had been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn’t sleep decause the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while away; and many others with less serious ailments. (274) This quote is able to capture the sheer greed of humanity in the quest for self-preservation. It seems as though most of the visitors automatically assume that the old man is an angel because of the wings; and the people flock to the old man for him to perform miracles. The people in the story could not just be happy with their lot in life, they had traveled to what they had thought would be the easy way to fix their problems. Much like how people today look for that miracle diet pill, or that get rich quick

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