Ambiguity In A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

The Ambiguity of “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” It is safe to assume, upon observation of both previous and present events, that people fear what they do not know. Comfort can be found in sameness while uncertainty tends to evoke feelings of negativity, fear, and prejudice, among others alike. When faced with what is different, people tend to display a variety of reactions, which can lie anywhere on the spectrum from kind to cruel. In “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the varying ways in which people conduct themselves when presented with ambiguity, in the form of the “old man with enormous wings”, are explored while illustrating the all too common maltreatment of people, or things, that are different (Marquez 1).

Pelayo and Elisenda, in ignoring the “inconvenience of the wings”, choose to cast aside the most glaringly different thing about the old man in favor of the more normal inference that he is a castaway from a ship (Marquez 1). This is an example of how when faced with something that contradicts what they believe, people tend to gravitate towards an easier explanation. Feigned ignorance, both in this story and in real life, often walks hand in hand with fear of ambiguity. In their article entitled “Why People ‘Fly From Facts’”, Troy Campbell and Justin Friesen support this idea as they detail the “slippery way by which people get away from facts that contradict their beliefs” (Campbell, Friesen 1). Though denial is not the best reaction to be had, it is still far better than others seen in “A Very Old Man With Enormous