In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” elements of the Fantastic exist right away. With the homely details of Pelayo and Elisenda’s life with Fantastic elements such as an “angel” being sent to heal a sick child. From the beginning of the story, Garcia Marquez’s style comes through in his unusual wordplay such as his description of the relentless rain
The worls had been sad since Tuesday
There is a mingling of the Fantastic and ordinary throughout the story, including the swarm of scrabs that invade Pelayo and Elisenda’s home and the muddy sand of the beach that in the rainy grayness looks “like powdered light”. Knowing about what kind of environment is being presented to the reader, it comes naturally to us when the old winged man appears, a living myth, someone who is nevertheless covered in lice and dressed in rags. This old man arrives in the small town looking very sick and can hardly compose a sentence when he spoke.
[He had] huge buzzard wings, dirty and half-plucked, [that] were forever entangled in the mud.
He is thought to be an angel sent to help the poor sick child, but is trapped when the child woke up without a fever and a desire to eat. The old man is subject to being kidnaped and kept in a chicken coop until finally, he regains enough strength to fly away and rid himself of the toxic reticule.