“A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings” and “The House of Asterion”, both gothic stories that share some similarities but are very different. Both stories have mysterious people that are the main character. These mysterious main characters are Asterion from “The House of Asterion” and the old man with wings from “A Very Old man With Enormous Wings”. Asterion does not clearly identify who or what he is, but he is definitely not an ordinary human and seems to be some type of superhuman figure. The old man with wings is also not clearly identified; there are some who believe that he is an angel (he himself seems to suggest this as well), and some who believed him to be a foreigner from overseas.

The plot of both stories is completely different with few if not any similarities. The plot point from THoA that stuck out the most is when Asterion talked about a ceremony that takes place every nine years with nine men who come to his house pretty much to be killed by him to which he claims he is delivering them from evil. Asterion does not seem to be sane; a few instances from this story seems to suggest that he is not sane and that people are not coming to his house to be “saved” rather they are going there to attempt to slay him. The plot point from AVOMWEW that stood out for me the most is when the old man with enormous wings had warned the people that the devil had a bad habit of making use of carinal tricks in order to confuse the wary. He also added the following line “if wings were not the essential element in determining the difference between a hawk and an airplane, they were even less so in the recognition of angels” (Marquez, 1955). That line has so many different meanings behind it and I can interpret it in a variety of ways but the way in which I view that statement is that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. The wings are the reason as to why the man was ostracized, the wings in which villagers paid so much attention to, the same wings that served no purpose throughout the story rather than holding the old man down, would ironically later be used to lift the old man into the sky and above adversity.

AVOMWEW took place in a village. The scenery on the outside was wet, had a stench of crabs and rotten shellfish, with the sea and sky both ash-gray color. THoA took place in a house, which was also the world. The house had no furniture, a limitless number of courtyards, a pool filled with sand (possibly he is referring to the desert), dusty gray stone galleries, temples, and seas. The setting for one story is dreary and seems to reflect the condition of the old man with wings. The setting for the other story is a bit more complicated in the sense that I cannot tell if Asterion lives in an actual house, is living in a world he has only imagined, or is living in the outside world with mortals. Asterion treats the world as if it revolves around himself.