A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings

Considering Pelayo and Elisenda were ready to send the old man off on a raft with food and supplies, their subsequent choice to instead lock him in the chicken coop as a kind of circus attraction is significant. They want to be rid of him and at first feel magnanimous at the idea of setting him free, but when they see he can help them turn a profit, they keep him captive. The chicken coop becomes a symbol of this greed. It also solidifies the old man’s status as a dehumanized animal; he becomes just another chicken that Pelayo and Elisenda “farm” to survive. Even the chicken coop receives more care than the angel himself: “If they washed [the coop] down with creolin and burned tears of myrrh inside it every so often, it was not in homage to the angel but to drive away the dungheap stench that still hung everywhere like a ghost” (Paragraph 11).

The literal barrier of the chicken coop that keeps the angel locked in also keeps the surrounding world out. The people who come to see him can only access him through the coop’s holes, which they penetrate with sticks and other devices to garner some reaction from the angel.