The Most Handsome Drowned Man In The World By Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A man is limited physically by a rope tied around his hands and feet. Villagers are limited intellectually where none of them have traveled around the world or they have not seen any of the natural beauties and diversities that the world has to offer. One is limited quite simply and clearly while the other simply cannot fathom the awe-inspiring sight bestowed upon them. These are the unlikely scenarios that confront readers of “The Bound Man,” by Ilse Aichinger, and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” by Garcia Marquez. "The Bound Man" is a story about a man who awoke to find himself stuck in a predicament where he has been tied up, knocked out, and left alone in the wilderness with nothing other than the clothes on his back.

Grading Guidelines: Answers will vary. A complete answer would look like the following: The villagers in “The Handsomest Man in the World” are compelled by their belief in a man they do not really know to bring about change in their village. They design their houses and landscape in honor of this drowned man, Esteban, so that his spirit will approve and feel at home in their community.

While, Esteban who is just an ordinary person and at the same time a dead man, was portrayed as a good looking guy, We can see this in paragraph 4, “Not only was he the tallest and strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination”. What’s ironic here is even though he is a drowned dead man who is supposed to be portrayed as a man full of anguish, he is still portrayed as a good looking as peaceful looking man. And even though he is already, many women still fantasize him.

The small city of Brownsville is small in both population and mind. Even though there are individuals who commute morning and night from country to country, there is no unity. Growing up, I had never experienced a “diverse” city. In the city of Brownsville, Hispanics are the majority. As a result, individuals who saw somebody of a different race or ethnicity would make negative and offensive comments towards them. At times, these offensive comments were accidental. Other times, the offensive comments were on purpose and intended to appear humorous to friends. Apart from discriminatory remarks to outsiders, this happened amongst people of my Hispanic community.

The main character, Esteban is known throughout the story as The drowned man. Because he was found dead in the water by children. He is a relatively flat character, considering the fact that he is dead. Even though the people in the village made theories of how his life must have been like,and dressed him up, the character never changed.

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and “Borders” by Thomas King have noticeable, noteworthy commonalities and points of contrast both in the fundamental literary aspects of theme and moral, storyline, setting, protagonists and antagonists, tone, and genre, which all serve to pose interesting developments and connections. Within “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, for instance, the theme involves a depiction of characteristic actions and emotions, which then develop a permeating moral of parts togetherness and the associated bonding. In “Borders”, the family attempting to move to the other side is as one; they are not separated of aligned against each other, and rejoice when they finally achieve success and experience triumph. The moral and theme of “Borders”, consequently, is similar to that of “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”. As inferred from the depictions in the stories, certain truths are not revealed initially; yet, when they are, they are posed as revelations and epiphanies, which should serve to change course for the better, and as experiences for like events in life.

In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” a remotely isolated village with a small population is suddenly turned upside down when the corpse of a giant stranger washes up on their small shore. This villager is clearly not from the same world the villagers live in, and as they wonder where he came from, they begin to create stories about his life and who he is. They give him a name, Esteban, and create a world of fiction through which they can glimpse what his life was like for him, regardless of the truth. As they prepare to give Esteban a proper funeral procedure according to their own cultural practices, they create stories about him and honor him, even though they have no idea who he really is. The lines between reality and illusion in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” are blurred in many ways, especially regarding the cultural conflict, concept of death, and ideological conflict of the villagers.

In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short stories “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” a magic gift is bequeathed upon the citizens. Marquez uses magic realism, a genre of fiction in which elements that defy logic are incorporated in a realistic way, to communicate human truths through the short stories. One village is presented with a haggard and frial angle, while the other is gifted with a beautiful yet deceased man. The stories reveal that humans treat people based on how they look. Their own ideas hinder their ability to see what is real and in front of them.

Discrimination Standards for appearance are dictated and measured by societal norms. Culture often defines these standards. Poor treatment can occur against outsiders when certain standards are not met by cultures. In the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings”, a man named Pelayo, and his wife Elisenda, find an outsider in their courtyard. The outsider is dirty, speaks an unknown dialect and has huge buzzard wings.

In Gabriel García Márquez short story, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” a mysterious man is found by Pelayo and Elisenda. This man was thought to be an angel because of his wings, but a priest came to check this out for himself to prove if this was true or not. Since the “angel’s” dialect was unknown and it did not fit the ideological form of an angel, they considered him a fraud. As time passed, the angel served Pelayo and Elisenda as an attraction and a form of getting money for their own convenience. Similarly, people use extraordinary things to get money nowadays.

In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, the corpse gave the villagers strength and a motive to better. The women in the house uncovered the debris on his body bit by bit. Marquez writes, “As they were doing that they noticed that the vegetation on him came from faraway oceans and deep water and that his clothes were in tatters, as if he had sailed through labyrinths of coral” (2). Through the face and body of Esteban, the villagers experienced the outside world. It didn’t take them long enough to realize how cut off they were from the rest of the society and the world. Marquez writes, “Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room

“A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez depicts the tendencies of human nature and society but also how the supernatural is brought up. One afternoon Pelayo was shocked to find that a very old man with wings lying face down in the mud in his courtyard. The only conclusion that Pelayo and his wife came up with was he was a fallen angel to come take their kid from them. When their baby was getting ill and they didn’t know what to do this man randomly pops up. Everyone had their options on what they should do with the man so they separated him from the humans. No one knew what to do with him so they locked him into a chicken coop.

In the story, The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a man washes up on shore and the village people find him and aquires that he has a face that looks like an Esteban. He is very big and very tall so it was hard to find clothing and shoes. The villagers use sails from boats as a shirt and they could not find a table big enough to fit his big body on. There are no flowers in the desert and the village is very bland looking. The flowers in the desert and the big, bright, colorful houses are created for the memory of Esteban.

Gabriel Marquez develops a recurring theme in “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World”. A truly great person has the power to inspire people toward self-improvement. Throughout the story, Marquez emphasizes this through the feelings and actions of the people on the island: “They thought that he would have had so much authority that he could have drawn fish out of the sea simply by calling their names” (2). The women of the island thought of Esteban as this great being. They thought this to the point where they were moved to tears seeing his dead body.

When I was a little girl at early of my age, I spent a wonderful time with my grandma near a sea in my hometown during the last two months of her life. That was the first time we saw the smile back to her face since we got the news that she got intestine cancer. Back to that time I was deeply impressed by how being around the sea was capable to change people’s emotion in such a positive way. The poet, Pablo Neruda, in his poem “The Sea” illustrates how the sea teaches a trapped man a lesson on how to be released from struggling to find freedom and happiness. The three crucial poem-writing elements, sound, structure, and figurative language make the power of sea more vivid just like a picture we could see and have physical feelings about. And when we try to get a deeper understanding of the poem, it is the sound that we hear first.