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The Healer

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Acceptance is one aspect that everyone in the human race strives for. But there are those who become outsiders from the world around them. These outsiders can sometimes be the thing that the rest of the people find extraordinary. In the stories The Healer by Aimee Bender and A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the central character finds themselves as the outsiders at the beginning of the story but towards the end, the reader is taught that maybe these outsiders could bring comfort to others. These characters, specifically the old man and the fire girl are blessings in disguise for the people around them, bringing comfort to the people who may need it. Both stories take place in what seems to be a normal world, with …show more content…

Bender used the complete opposite of the fire and ice in order to state the issue of pain and how sometimes the thing that appears to be the destructive aspect ends up being the healing aspect towards the end of the story. When the people felt alone, they’d turn towards the fire girl who would then in turn add burns to their face because “it felt somehow wonderful, they said. For one long second, it felt like the world was holding them close” (Bender 133). Even though fire is considered to be destructive and dangerous, the people felt a warmth from the fire that comforted them in an unlikely way. Comparatively, the old man was not the one directly helping others, but good things seemed to happen while the old man was with Pelayo and his family. Over the course of the old man’s “stay” with the family, multiple blessings came upon the family, “a short time afterward the child woke up without a fever and with a desire to eat” (Marquez 124). The people were in awe that there was a real angel in front of them, so their faith was tested, bringing up the emotions that brought the people to keeping him locked up. When the spider woman comes into town, everyone basks in her shadow, praising her and admiring her for her story. They did not lock her up and instead took the fame away from the old man, turning their attention towards the spider …show more content…

The old man and the fire girl are both considered outsiders until the people start to notice that they are not so different from the rest after all. The fire girl just wanted to fit in with everyone else and not feel the emotion overload that she did and the old man did not want to be treated as a circus act, instead wanting a place to stay until he was able to fly again. These two were able to teach those around thing, whether they knew it or not, about the importance of how people should treat others as well as how the most unlikely thing, such as fire, could bring such a warming comfort to those around

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