Special Post II

As weird as I thought the story was, I figured “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” had many things in it to interpret. The whole story starts with a man with wings falling from the sky. He comes down to take a couple’s sick child. The couple doesn’t really know what to do, so they locked him in a chicken coop. They get a priest to come over and ask the angel question to prove that it is an angel. There many questions that pointed the angel out proving that he wasn’t apparently to the public eye. The wife was tired of having so many people form the community come into the house that she starting charging people to come over. They eventually become rich and get a mansion. Everyone started getting tired of the angel because another “freak” had risen to fame that had been turned into a tarantula. Her only means of nourishment are meatballs being tossed into her mouth. Years go by and the angel looks like he is on the verge of death. He is still in the coop and has been treated vey poorly. He randomly becomes healthy and is able to get out of his cage. He tries to roam the house in search of the daughter but keeps getting shooed out of the room by the mother. He attempts to fly away form the house and is successful at doing so. The mother was happy to not have him around anymore.

            I guess I still never quite understood the whole thing about putting the angel in a chicken coop. I guess I could understand that they weren’t sure what he would do if he woke up. I just thought out of everything a chicken coop seemed weird.

            I think that this story deals with the mindset that everything is not what it seems at first. This is clearly shown when the priest is trying to prove that the man is an angel. They think that because he doesn’t speak Latin that is a reason to doubt. Even when the angel would speak out to the people around they still seemed to look past his words. Everyone was soon not interested because the next interesting thing came along. Everyone just left him and he was alone. It was almost as if people thought he was crazy. People like to believe things they can only see. The story seems to be a story also about having faith. An angel comes straight out of the sky from heaven and people still need proof even after what he tells everyone otherwise. It is almost the equivalent of regular humans spreading the good news about Jesus and people just ignoring them. This time it is an angel. It’s like, how much proof do you need? Especially a priest! Why does an angel have to speak Latin in order to be a true angel? I just think it is funny that a priest is testing an angel. Just the concept of that is funny. He looks like an idiot in the end when he is proven wrong. Well he is wrong to begin with so I guess he does look like an idiot.

            I think the interpretation matters because it shows what things as humans we should believe and not believe. We should not believe in this case what the priest it trying to prove about the angel. It is almost like he didn’t even think in depth about what he was doing. It was like he knew how to test an angel. What book tells him how to test someone to see if they are a legit angel?  You would think a priest out of anyone would be one to listen to something out of heaven. I guess it goes to show that even people in ministry can be pretty ignorant and stupid at times in the way they act. This matters because there should not be judgment on people unless they have something about them that is an example of why they are not something. The story also shows how when a new thing comes around, everybody runs to that new interest because humans like to follow the crowd. I think sometimes it is appropriate but at other times why is there a need to follow everyone? Also the parents seeming  like they were scared to let their daughter go when she was sick. No one wants ever see their child pass away. It was as if the parents could not accept their daughter passing away and giving her up. As a Christian, we should be able to give up anything for God. It is hard because we attach ourselves to things subconsciously and it is hard to separate ourselves once we are attached. Letting God do his part is our way of honoring God through letting him take over our lives. As humans we get afraid to let things go because we are afraid to lose control over things we think are ours. We don’t know which direction we are going to go with God in control. People get worried when they can’t always see what is in front of them. With God in control we just do what we feel led to do without question and not always in understanding. God tries to show us more than we realize at times. Things seem so simple at times but in reality they are complex. Sometimes it’s vice versa. 

A Very Old Man, A Very Weird Story

So basically this angel falls onto earth to take away Pelayo and Elisenda's daughter. I honestly don't even know how to relate to this story. It is just so out there too me. I'm not trying to sound shallow or anything especially towards Professor Corrigan. These people caged an angel and had people pay them money to come and see him since they were tired of the community coming over to the house. Then the priest trying to prove if the man was a real angel. It almost seemed a little sac-religious. Not everything is what it seems. I like how the angel gets better and still roams the house for the girl. Elisanda finally "shoos" him away and rids the "annoyance" out of her life. I'm not exactly sure about all the symbolism involved with some of the stuff in it but all I now is that the story is very out there. I guess the story could be saying that we should not judge what we are not sure of. The priest was trying to test the man to see if he was an angel. The old man didn't know latin and had moral characteristics which led people to believe that he was not an angel. Maybe we are not supposed to know that angels seem human. Maybe the story is trying to tell us not to judge based on what we see on the outside and that there is a deeper meaning to angels then what we will see. God doesn't want us to know everything. As for the priest, I think this could be a way God tests him. A priest who leads masses is asking this angel questions to see if he is real. It almost takes away from the "faith' aspect in christianity. It is in our nature to only believe things that we see and not believe in. That's why faith is such a hard thing. It's nothing we can see, it's only something we can believe.

Walking Away From Omelas/Pleasantville

So again for me at least this is another story that was hard for me to really get into. It is just weird to me even though I know it is a made-up city. It is also a little amusing in a way with the things that are described in the short story. A place of happiness and delight sounds like a fairy tale. This story almost sounds like a Narnia type place before the White Witch took over and things got cold and more evil. Everything in this Omelas is pleasing except for this one truth that the city has. Too me it sounds like a super conservative city where they handle a blunt truth because they are too blinded my themselves to listen or believe it. It's like the movie Pleasantville. Everything is black & white and beautiful and perfect. When people come in from a different world with a more realistic perspective on things which make things turn into color. People start getting angry at the change because their world has been a certain way for so long with no worries. A very unrealistic world. When the brother and sister introduce new things into this world the people start getting more and more curious about things. They start realizing there is more to their world than not using bodily functions and not learning about pointless things. The world is more complex than they portray. The world is not just black and white, there is gray.