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30 pages 1 hour read

Gabriel García Márquez

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1968

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Story Analysis

Analysis: “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” explores several complex themes, such as beauty, the relationship between imagination and reality, and community. García Márquez uses the third-person limited-omniscient point of view, which allows the narrator to access the perspectives of multiple villagers. However, the narrator’s perspective is limited and shares in the villagers’ wonder of who the drowned man was in life compared to who he is in death. If the story were truly omniscient, the narrator would have access to information surrounding the drowned man’s death and know his identity. Instead, the narrator only knows the man as Esteban because that is what the villagers name him.

García Márquez employs elements of magical realism to highlight the power of the imagination. The story takes place in a small seaside village. Nothing extraordinary happens, but the villagers ironically envision the drowned man as a fantastic being. He’s elevated to the level of something magnificent, and the narrative world universally accepts him as such. The villagers don’t question the significance they place on him. Instead, they idolize the drowned man despite knowing nothing about him. As typical of magical realism, one or two select fantastic elements are present in a realistic work. Because these extraordinary elements—such as Esteban’s size and how the villagers receive him—are grounded in realism, the narrative enables readers to suspend their disbelief.

The inclusion of mythology into this short story functions to further blend reality and the fantastic. García Márquez alludes to several mythologized beings—Quetzalcoatl, Lautaro, and Estevanico—to amplify the drowned man’s grandeur without overwhelming the reader. For example, in Aztec mythology, Quetzalcoatl was a deity who came from the sea and helped create civilization. Mythological allusions, such as the allusion to sirens, also serve to introduce magical elements in an otherwise ordinary world. In this way, the text characterizes the villagers and their close-knit community as having a mythologized ideology system. Further, readers can infer from textual allusions that the fishing village is located in Latin America. Through the motif of mythology, García Márquez develops the themes of The Way Imagination Shapes Reality and The Transformative Power of a Stranger in a Community.

García Márquez’s choice of genre enables the thematic development of The Way Imagination Shapes Reality because magical realism is a literal blending of the two. This theme is explored through the story of Esteban’s life that the villagers create and how they fully believe in their engineered narrative. The villagers’ response to the drowned man serves as a call to action, imploring readers to question the imagined narratives they may have within their own lives. In tandem, the theme of The Transformative Power of a Stranger in a Community develops through the creation of Esteban’s narrative and how the villagers are inspired to overcome their isolation and plain existences. This myth takes hold of the community and unites the men, women, and children through their shared desire for improvement. They vow to build a future that is worthy of their Esteban and as extraordinary as he is.

The villagers’ transformation parallels the story’s changing tone. García Márquez begins his piece with a tone of awe and curiosity. He focuses on the reactions and questions that the villagers begin to develop. In terms of narrative space, this short story only takes place over the course of one full day and has four major plot points: the discovery of the body, the women’s reaction, the men’s reaction, and the climactic funeral. However, the piece is elongated by the depth in which García Márquez explores the villagers’ reactions. At first, he uses words of disbelief like “breathless” and “magnificent” (Paragraphs 4-5) to show how awed the villagers are. As the characters begin to create the drowned man’s identity as Esteban, the tone of the narrative shifts. The villagers begin to think in words that display their sincerity and reverence for the drowned man. For example, the villagers depict his funeral in words filled with love and admiration, like “splendid,” “eternal,” “privilege,” and “peaceful” (Paragraph 10). This helps to display the way that the villagers fully believe in the imagined life that they have created for the drowned man.

García Márquez also explores the theme of Beauty and Individual Worth. Once the “handsome” drowned man washes up on shore, the villagers begin to speculate about his robust life. The man’s physical appearance is his only defining feature. His size and beauty immediately captivate the women and children within the village. Many are awestruck at the sight of him, despite the seemingly grotesque state of his body from having been deep within the ocean for an extended period of time. This immediate fixation on the man’s appearance shapes the entirety of the narrative and works allegorically, mirroring the way in which beauty often shapes our perceptions of value in modern society. Because the drowned man appears so different from the ordinary villagers, the village women fantasize about the drowned man, creating their own name and history for him. They elevate him to the status of a hero, akin to a mythologized character. They imagine him as an accomplished sailor or a giant from another land. In essence, they project their own ideals onto the dead man. However, the man is offered no agency and is objectified by the villagers, revealing just how ingrained their cultural narrative is with the concept of beauty and perfection.

Similarly, the burial acts more as a conduit to explore and encapsulate the drowned man’s beauty than to honor his life. Flowers are a key symbol of beauty and signify the villagers’ hope for a brighter future. The villagers engage in elaborate rituals, decorating the drowned man’s shroud in flowers from nearby villages and covering him in shells; they even make an altar for him within the village. It is important to remember that the drowned man is not from the village and has no connection to it. It is his beauty and the imagination of the villagers who draft a narrative for the man that create a significance about him. Honoring Esteban is more about the villagers’ desire to make sense of the beauty they’re encountering than the death of this foreign individual. Beauty, as it is presented in the form of the ethereal drowned man, serves to force the reader to question their own personal understanding of the relationship between beauty and worth within society.

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