During life, humanity discovers many things beyond its understanding and will be interpreted and put in its place as humans do with everything. Humanity has tried to adapt the universe within the limits of human logic and it is inevitable that there will be misunderstandings in the process. Gabriel García Márquez felt this happened too often to his work, and wrote A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings in an attempt to show literary critics the folly of excessive pursuit of taxonomic perfection. In A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings, Gabriel García Márquez challenges literary interpretation in a parody of the interpretations that literary critics impose on his work by writing with an absent plot and superficial characters, instead using symbolism to allude to the parodic theme he intends . The first tool that Márquez uses against interpretation is plot: by writing a plot deliberately devoid of any element that makes it rich or profound, he essentially creates an absent plot, which by its very nature foils attempts to interpret it. Although events occur within the story, these events do not present any conflict between the characters, the characters' bodies, or the natural world. When Pelayo or Elisenda force the Angel to live in their chicken coop, he neither resists nor responds to any of his visitors. “The angel was the only one who did not take part in his own act” (Márquez 272). Despite the fascination that tourists have for him, he focuses only on feeling comfortable in his environment. However, as the story progresses, the arrival of the angel (or anything else, for that matter) brings no tension to the story other than to annoy Father Gonzaga. On the contrary, things get progressively better for everyone: Pe...... middle of paper ......om, Harold and John Gerlach. Bloom's modern critical visions: Gabriel Garcia Márquez. New York, North Carolina: Infobase Publishing, 1999. Web. .Goodwin, John. “A VERY OLD MAN WITH ENORME WINGS by Márquez and THE LESSON by Bambara.” Explainer. 64.2 (2006): 128-130. Network. November 5, 2011. .Márquez, Gabriel García. "A very old man with enormous wings." Norton's introduction to literature. Ed. Booth, Alison and Kelly J. Mays. London: WW Norton & Company Inc., 2011. 269-274. Print.Slomski, Genevieve. Masterplots II: Short Story Series, Revised Edition. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press, Web. .