A very old man.

When you think you’ve read the most intriguing, confusing, weird story ever written.. Professor Corrigan assigns another one.

The first thing I would like to ask is how is this a tale for children? Perhaps I could understand it better if I had the mindset of a child, and I wasn’t trying to analyze every little thing as much as I have been. Though I highly doubt that is the case. Something that shocks me in both of these stories we have read recently is the people’s complete lack of concern for a human life. Whether it is a child or an elderly man with wings. Of course, this is fiction. I guess I shouldn’t forget that.

Is their significance in the fact that the boy got better after the angel had arrived at their house? Or that both the angel and the boy got chicken pox at the same time? I feel like there is, I just can’t pin point it. Especially since when the angel left, there was no fanfare. Neither was there any correlation between him leaving and the boy seeing. However, the mom saw and felt relief. This would make sense though because she felt he was slightly a nuisance wandering about the house.

Another interesting thing I saw were the discussion questions at the end of the story. One of them asked us to discuss how the “very old man” had impacted the lives of the man and wife together. It is hard for me to see how he really did in any significant way. It’s not like they were struggling to begin with and then the angel brought them together. So in what way did this guy bring their family together? They did make plenty of money by showing him off as a spectacle. Stories like these just really make me want to get inside the author’s head. I really wish I could just know what they were thinking while writing this story and what intentions they had for each character.