Sample 1
Throughout history, personality and socially-held beliefs have influenced the way humanity
moved through their daily lives and the decisions they made in long-term thinking.
In the short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, magical realism, which is when an author
creates a world similar to our own, but subtly weaves magic into the fabric
of reality to show a world that mirrors their own, and how in that world compassion
and cruelty exist as factors which balance each other in all walks of life.
The short story opens with the couple Palayo and Elisenda, two downtrodden people,
stumbling upon a winged man collapsed in their rain soaked courtyard. They go on to turn
this bald-skulled man with very few teeth and large dirty buzzard wings, who most believe
is an angel with, into a source of profit. They market him as an angel and turn their backyard
into a circus attraction, which works until he is outdone by other acts, which came to capitaliz
e off of the crowds. Finally, after living with the now-rich couple for some more years, the
angel finally took off toward the horizon, having transformed the lives of Palayo and Elisenda.
Elisenda and Palayo especially display the coexistence of compassion and cruelty. When
they first encounter the old winged man, their neighbor tells them to “club him to death”, but the
couple refuse. Instead, they choose a mask of compassion over the different cruel life
they give the man. They make him live in the chicken coup, children “tossing him things to
eat through the wire”, dehumanizing this lost person to the point of him being treated as if
he were a circus animal. In this instance, their attempted compassion leads to more
cruelty towards the man, the two sides of the spectrum continuing to balance each other out.
Their decisions on how to treat the man are not necessarily cruel for the sake of being cruel,
but their low socioeconomic status forces them to think about their own wellbeing before his.
The overarching message of this story is the lengths to which people need to go to help
themselves to survive.
**************************************************************************
Sample 2: The decisions one makes in life will influence the afterlife. The scale of deeds, or the purification of purgatory are what those who believe influence their lives and decisions. In the short story A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings By Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the author uses the technique of magical realism, which is a subgenre usually used by Latin American writers where there is a realistic plot with magical aspects to the story, and to specifically show how the cruel and compassionate aspects of the world accompany one another.
The peasant Pelayo, a husband and father and his wife Elisenda demonstrate how good and evil are intertwined in the world by using an anomaly: an old broken down man with wings who has fallen from the sky. These two characters would go through and demonstrate their care and compassion, but also show their cruelty to something and someone for they know nothing.
To start, Pelayo is shocked by the old man’s existence, but instead of casting him off like the other villagers, he decides to take him in under his own imaginary wing and shelter him. To show Pelayo’s compassion against the cruelty “Pelayo watched over him all afternoon from the kitchen, armed with his bailiff’s club” This shows that Pelayo is concerned about the old man and, previously from the neighbor woman suggesting, that he “club the angel to death”; he instead decides to watch over him and make sure that he is fine; that no one comes to harm him. Even though Pelayo shows compassion towards someone who he doesn’t have the responsibility to take care of, there is also cruelty behind his actions: “Before going to bed he dragged him out of the mud and locked him up with the hens in the wire chicken coop”; “then got the idea of fencing in the yard and charging five cents admission to see the angel”. This shows Pelayo’s cruelty and greed towards the old man, and the fact that he still sees him as nothing more than a “circus animal''. He may have been compassionate towards him, but his greed for money took over as to use the old man as an attraction as well as the fact that he had dragged the old man through the mud instead of being careful with his broken down body.
Another example of cruelty and compassion in this tale is Pelayo’s wife Elisenda. Elisenda is shown to show little compassion towards the old man other than allowing him to stay inside of her barn; and in the end when the old man flies off, she shows her wonder and care towards him as the most mysterious thing in her life is flying away. “Elisenda let out a sigh of relief, for herself and for him, when she watched him pass over the last houses” This demonstrates her compassion towards the old man to be glad that he’s finally made it and is safe and taking off. She may have thought of him as a nuisance to her life, and used him completely as an attraction for greed and money, but she still does show lots of compassion towards the old man. “ The exasperated and unhinged Elisenda shouted that it was awful living in that hell full of angels” This shows Elisenda’s cruelty: here is a beaten, mysterious old man who seems to be an angel, and Elisenda sees him as nothing but a nuisance to her life, someone she wishes to get rid of at any given moment. Just as soon as the villagers stopped paying to see the old man, and feeding the married couple with money, is when Elisenda used more of her greed to see the old man as nothing but useless, instead of trying to help and understand him. It truly shows that anomalies in the lives of people in the world can be treated with both cruelty and compassion.
Garcia Marquez used the anomaly of an old man who appeared to be an angel to show the true personalities and feelings of the characters in a realistic world. Pelayo and Elisenda are the eyes of the story, as they make their decisions on how they should treat a mysterious broken down old man with wings. From seeing this fallen angel, they were both good and evil to him. With religion and the afterlife most would be judged, especially for treating an angel who is an old man so poorly and crudely. The message of the story is, always be kind and good to people who you don’t know and treat things and people with respect and care, because you never know what someone is going through or has been through.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
IMPORTANT: Please check your grades. If I missed putting in an assignment that you sent, please resend to dorothy.parker@rcsdk12.org Grades for this quarter end tomorrow. That allows for the extended time you have had to turn in missing work.
Notes on your The Very Old Man with Enormous Wings essay.
Capitalization!
Note that you only had to copy the heading
Italics: On line, you must use italics anytime you write the title of a short story, poem, play or novel.
Avoid: Repeating the title and author after the introductory paragraph. Use the author's surname, if needed.
Bolding: Do Not!
Subjunctive: If I were, not if I was
Conclusion: Do not repeat the introduction; you must conclude with a "big idea": what message should be taken away from the essay? Universalize!
Specific to this: Beliefs are part of everyone's life
Honors: You must have text woven in
Spacing: Evenly double space throughout the whole document.
Never: In the beginning or at the end. These are fillers. Set the scene: when...
Never: reference the reader. This is not a 19th century novel.
Never: "We": this is not a group conversation or "you think", "you know"
Supposed to: Write on one of the themes that was given!
Make sure": For me to edit, always send to dorothy.parker @rcsdk12.org NOT to the 200660
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
periods 1 and 4.
Quickwrite: In your notebook, repond to the following prompt:
This is the last assignment for this marking quarter. I am counting this as bonus work.
Due today!
In Shelley’s poem Ozymandias’ statue has the inscription, “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” yet there is nothing but sand and ruins. To what extent does one have control over how we are remembered in the future? What could Ozymandias have done while he lived that might’ve helped towards the preservation of his statue? Personal response (do not start with I!; minimum 200 words.
