Practically every story in some form or fashion is based on things we see happen everyday. “A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” is no different. You can pretty easily infer from the title that the story includes an angel. This guy with larger-than-life wings basically crash-landed into a village that recognized the creature to be an angel, yet they didn’t appreciate this miraculous encounter. Instead, they locked him in a cage in the chicken coop “as if it weren’t a super natural creature but a circus animal.” The worst, most disturbing part is that this reflects exactly what our society does. We take blessings for granted and treat most anything ”strange” or out of our comfort zone as a freak.
Another deadly sin we are all guilty of is greed. The family who housed the heavenly creature made a hefty sum of money by charging people to witness and ridicule it. Did they even consider how the poor angel felt? Trapped, poked and prodded, treated no better if not worse than an animal? I guess they also overlooked the “coincidence” that their feverish child suddenly became well when the angel arrived. We as humans naturally tend to be driven by selfish greed, to veer away from anything we consider out of the ordinary, and to be completely oblivious to miracles around us. This story is right on the money. We should think about how those “freaks” feel a little more often and think about ourselves a little less.
