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The poem “Sonnet for Heaven Below” and the short story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” are similar in many ways. The angels, or “God’s children,” in the sonnet are the homeless people living in the dirty subway tunnels of New York. They have no jobs, so they have no money. They do not have the chance to bathe or shave. Their “angel feathers” are ruined by acid rain, and they “sing hoarsely.” They are dressed badly, and their “gossamer shoes” are torn and stained. Since they do not look or sound the way people think they should, the homeless are not seen as being worthy people. New Yorkers do not treat them like one would treat other human beings, and eventually they just ignore the homeless. The New Yorkers are not in a hurry to solve the issue of homelessness. They have decided that they would rather continue to ignore the homeless than deal with tourists. The theme of the poem is that even the homeless are still human beings who should be treated with dignity. Anyone could be an angel in disguise.
In “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” the old man is an angel from heaven, so he has no home on Earth. The couple who finds him forces him to live in a nasty chicken coop until it collapses. Even though the couple makes a fortune charging people to see the angel, they do not share any of the money with him. The angel smells bad because he only gets to wash if they decide to hose down the coop because of the stench. His feathers are ruined by mud, parasites, and villagers pulling them out. He is dressed “like a ragpicker” and does not know how to speak Latin. Since he does not look or sound the way people think an angel should, they think he is not worthy to be considered an angel. The angel was not even treated as one would treat another human being. The villagers treat him very badly, and then they ignore him and go on to the spider girl. Priest and church authorities are not in a hurry to solve the mystery of the angel. When the angel finally flew away, the woman “let out a sigh of relief” because he was no longer her problem to deal with. The theme of the story is that people tend to mistreat those they do not understand instead of trying to help or understand them. People should “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Hebrews 13:2)
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