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Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings Complete Guide (NEB New Syllabus) | Notes, Exercise Solutions & Summary | Literature
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Welcome to your premier destination for the Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings academic syllabus. This complete online textbook companion offers fully resolved answers to all end-of-chapter questions and literature context exercises.

Through this comprehensive resource on Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, authored by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you will explore profound literary themes regarding magical realism, human greed, societal gullibility, and the bizarre events in Pelayo’s courtyard.

To acquire more context on the author and his literary style, you can explore the life and works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez online.

Access our general index for additional chapters here: Class 12 English Notes.

Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings study notes

1. Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: Understanding the Text

Answer the following questions based on the short story.
a. How does the narrator describe the weather and its effects in the exposition of the story?
The narrator sets up the bleak picture of a rainy day to describe the weather and its gloomy effects in the exposition of the story. The rain falls continuously for three days and makes the land and houses filled with rainwater. During this heavy rainy season, the sky and sea were changed into an ash-grey color, and the sand on the shore—which usually glimmered like powdered light—had become a hash of mud and rotten shellfish. The light sparked was incredibly weak and hard to see.
b. Describe the strange old man as Pelayo and his wife first encounter within their courtyard.
When Pelayo and his wife first encountered the strange old man in their courtyard, they noticed him dressed in the miserable manner of a rag picker. He had a bald head and looked almost completely shaved. His mouth was almost empty with no teeth remaining. His most defining feature, his large and dirty buzzard wings, were half-plucked and heavily entangled in mud.
c. Why did Pelayo and Elisenda imprison the old man in the chicken coop?
Pelayo and Elisenda imprisoned the fragile old man in the chicken coop because they were deeply terrified, thinking that he is an angel and that he was there to take their sick child away to heaven.
d. Why was Father Gonzaga not sure about the old man being a celestial messenger?
Father Gonzaga was not sure about the old man being a celestial messenger because the old man didn’t know how to respectfully greet God’s ministers and also didn’t understand the language of God. Father noticed this when he said “good morning” in Latin; the old man just murmured something in his own incomprehensible dialect which the father didn’t understand.
e. Many people gathered at Pelayo’s house to see the strange old man. Why do you think the crowd assembled to see him?
Many people gathered at Pelayo’s house to see the strange old man simply because he was entirely unique and strange with his massive buzzard wings. People enthusiastically thought of him as an angel or a messenger of God, and simultaneously thought of making some cruel fun with him.
f. Some miracles happened while the crowd gathers to see the strange man. What are these miracles?
In the story, it is mentioned that some highly ironic and bizarre miracles happened while the crowd gathered to see the strange man. Those miracles were: the blind man who couldn’t recover his eyesight but grew three new teeth, the paralytic person who couldn’t walk but almost won the lottery, and the leper whose sores miraculously flourished sunflowers.
g. State the irritating things that the people did with the strange old man.
The people gathered at Pelayo’s house did some incredibly inhuman and teasing tasks with the strange old man. Such irritating and cruel things included aggressively throwing stones at the old man, pulling out his feathers, and brutally burning his side with a hot iron rod. This made him deeply injured, and he was not capable of moving. He laid there like a dead man for half an hour and finally woke up full of tears.
h. How and why was the woman changed into a spider?
The reason behind the changing of the woman into a spider is a magical lightning strike as a punishment. Without any parental permission, she sneaked out to dance. When she was returning from the dark forest, a massive lightning strike shattered the sky, and a bolt of brimstone hit her directly and converted her into a terrifying spider.
i. Describe how Elisenda saw the strange man flying over the houses?
Elisenda saw the strange man flying over the house from her windows while she was casually chopping vegetables in the kitchen. While doing so, she felt a sudden breeze and moved to the window to check what it was. She then saw the elderly guy trying desperately to fly. After a brief struggle, she saw that he finally succeeded to fly and vanished quickly into the horizon.

2. Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings: Reference to the Context

a. The arrival of a strange old man at Pelayo’s courtyard arouses many suspicions and explanations. Explain how the neighbour woman, Father Gonzaga and the doctor speak of the strange man. Why do you think these three people give three different kinds of interpretations?

The appearance of a strange old man at Pelayo’s courtyard produces many suspicions and explanations among the locals. According to the neighbour woman, who relies on superstition, he was an “angel” who came for their child, but the poor fellow is so old that the rain knocked him down.

Father Gonzaga was not sure about the old man being a celestial messenger because he did not understand the language of God (Latin) or know how to greet His ministers. He looked much too human, he had an intolerable smell of the outdoors, and the backside of his wings was sprinkled with parasites. There was nothing about him that measured up to the proud dignity of angels. So Father told the viewers that an old man who has wings wasn’t an angel. But the eager crowd didn’t pay attention to Father Gonzaga.

According to the doctor, viewing him scientifically, the strange man couldn’t be alive for a long time. He found so much whistling in the heart and so many sounds in his kidneys. It seemed the body of the “angel” was completely logical as a human organism, but the doctor couldn’t understand why other men didn’t have wings too.

In my opinion, these three people give three different kinds of variations to a strange old man because they are all involved in different types of professions and they all see the strange old man strictly through their own specific worldviews. The old woman believes in folklore like angels and ghosts. Father Gonzaga interprets everything through strict religious doctrine and proof. And the doctor is a person who only sees the strange old man as a biological patient.

b. This story belongs to the genre of ‘magical realism, a genre perfected by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his novels and short stories. Magical realism is a narrative technique in which the storyteller narrates the commonplace things with magical colour and the events look both magical and real at the same time. Collect five magic realist happenings from the story and argue why they seem magical to you.

The Class 12 English Short Story A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings perfectly belongs to the genre of ‘magical realism’. Following are five magic realist happenings from the story:

1. The Old Man’s Wings: At the beginning of the story, Pelayo casually sees a very old man lying face down in the mud in his garden who had enormous wings. The writer uses magical realism by blending a fragile, mundane old man with the fantastical element of wings, treated as a normal annoyance.
2. The Unbelievable Dialect: When Pelayo and Elisenda tried to talk with the strange old man, he answered in an unbelievable, impenetrable dialect with a strong sailor’s voice. It shows a magical link in the sense that he was from another mysterious world but spoke like a normal human.
3. The “Angel” Concept Normalized: After seeing the old man, the old woman casually called him an “angel” who came for their child, but noted he was so old that the rain knocked him down. Treating a supernatural being as a victim of normal weather justifies the magical link in the story.
4. The Spider Woman: The bizarre modification of the woman into a spider for having disobeyed her parents by going out to dance. A massive thunderclap hit and a lightning bolt of brimstone changed her into a tarantula with a human head. This absurd, magical punishment is accepted as a normal sideshow attraction.
5. The Doctor’s Diagnosis: As shown by the story, the doctor examined the old man and found standard human ailments (whistling in the heart and sounds in his kidneys), yet accepted the wings as totally natural. An old man became weak and sick, his feathers fell out, but quickly his feathers regrew and he flew away.
c. The author introduces the episode of a woman who became a spider for having disobeyed her parents. This episode at once shifts people’s concentration from the strange old man to the spider woman. What do you think is the purpose of the author to bring this shift in the story?

The author deliberately introduces the episode of a woman who became a spider for having disregarded her parents by going outside to dance without any permission. The scene of shifting a woman into a spider breaks the town’s attention away from the old man. I think the author brought this shift in the story to show another vivid example of magical realism, but more importantly, to expose the fickle greed and superficiality of humans.

In the beginning, Pelayo and Elisenda only take “care” of the strange old man when they heavily benefit from him by charging five cents admission to see him. But when a spider woman comes—offering a much easier moral lesson to understand—people pay less attention to the angel because they do not genuinely care about him spiritually. The old man is dragged here and there. The chicken coop house of the old man collapses due to rain and sun, but they selfishly don’t repair it once he stops generating revenue.

d. The story deals with the common people’s gullibility. How do Pelayo and his wife take advantage of common people’s whim?

The story beautifully deals with the common people’s gullibility. Pelayo and his wife saw an old man with wings in their garden. When they wanted to talk with him, he answered in an impenetrable dialect. So they called an old woman who was known as a witch. She confidently called the old man an “angel” who came to take their child. Pelayo pulled him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop.

A short time afterwards, the sick child woke up without a fever and with a healthy desire to eat. They now felt like magic just happened. Then they felt momentarily generous and decided to put the old man on a raft with fresh water and provisions to leave him to his fate on the high seas. But when they got up early in the morning and saw that their courtyard was completely full of crowds, they were amazed. The news of the angel spread like a fire. People didn’t even listen to Father Gonzaga’s logical voice that he was not an angel.

Seeing this gullibility, Pelayo’s wife, Elisenda, got a brilliant, greedy idea to fence in the yard and charge five cents admission to see the angel. By heavily taking advantage of the common people’s whim and obsession with the supernatural, they gathered a massive amount of wealth from it and built a luxurious mansion for themselves, treating the angel merely as a profitable circus freak.

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