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   epollock Teacher
   High School - 12th Grade

   eNotes Editor

   devin1999,

   The narrator makes the statement that "His only supernatural virtue seemed to be patience". His wings and the ability to fly make the stranger different from ordinary men but so too do his patience and acceptance of suffering.

   The story is satiric and comical. One ought not to be so concerned with creating a religious allegory that one fails to see the humor, for instance, in the comments on the priest, the mail from Rome, and the “lesson” taught by the spider-woman. (In this last we hear a jibe at the conventional morality of fairy tales and of bourgeois standards.)

   As in other satire, the vision of human stupidity and cruelty is as unnerving as it is amusing. And what perhaps is especially unnerving is the fact that Pelayo and Elisenda are, at least when they discover the man, not particularly villainous. “They did not have the heart to club him to death,” and so they at first (kindly, by their standards) plan to set him adrift on a raft for three days and “leave him to his fate on the high seas.” Such is the depth, or rather the shallowness, of decency.

   One mystery is that the mysterious, winged old man seems more real (in his behavior) than the others. This story, like other works of fantasy, evokes “hesitation” (uncertainty). Fantasy is not simply a matter of improbable happenings. The happenings in an allegory are usually improbable, but allegories are not fantasies, because the supernatural events can be interpreted on a naturalistic level. But in “A Very Old Man,” there remains a strong sense of uncertainty, an uncertainty that survives such an allegorical interpretation and theme such as “There is a winged aspect of man that can fly despite the lack of appreciation of others.

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   Posted by epollock on Saturday June 6, 2009 at 10:08 PM