Why The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World

In Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Manolin and Santiago went out fishing together every day, but they never caught any fish. Manolin’s parents told him he wasn’t allowed to fish with Santiago anymore because of his constant “bad luck.” Manolin was distressed, and he still visited Santiago every day. One day Santiago went far out to sea on his own to catch a marlin. He went on a terrible journey which had an even more dreadful outcome. Santiago caught the marlin, but had to return home empty handed because sharks tore his fish to pieces. When Manolin saw Santiago had returned, he was overjoyed to see that he was still alive. “The boy saw that Santiago was breathing and then he saw the old man’s hands and he started to cry. He went out very quietly to go bring some coffee and all the way down the road he was crying” (Hemingway 122). Manolin felt compassion for Santiago because he had to embark on a solitary, godawful journey. Manolin felt very close to Santiago, and he had feared that he had passed away at sea. Once Manolin discovered Santiago survived, he was so relieved that he burst into tears. This all goes to show how vulnerable Manolin was because of his compassion for Santiago. In The Bible, Jesus tells a parable about a Good Samaritan. In it, a man is mugged and left to die on the side of a road. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him,

“On the outskirts of town, within the verge of the peninsula, but not in close vicinity to any other habitation, there was a small thatched cottage. It had been built by an earlier settler, and abandoned because the soil about it was too sterile for cultivation, while its comparative remoteness put it out of the sphere of that social activity which already marked the habits of the emigrants. It stood on the shore, looking across a basin of the sea at the forest-covered hills toward the west.”

Authors get across their ideas in a multitude of ways. In the story “The Handsomest Drowned man in the World”, the author Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses imagery to develop the messages that “People can be inspired by the simplest of things.” and that “Hope can be found in the strangest places.” In the story, the washed up dead man inspired the people to become better versions of themselves, and to live life to the fullest. At the beginning of the story, the people were melancholy, and their world was dreary. The people are only doing what they must do, in order to survive. However, by the end of the story, the people are jubilant, hopeful, and exhilarated. They are alive, and they are changed. The island itself is colorful with flowers, and buzzing

The old man from the story A very old man with enormous wings and Esteban from the story The Handsomest drowned man in the world are opposites of each other, maybe the only similarity that they have is that they are both flat and static characters. First, they are different in terms on how they are portrayed. The old man who is an angel, was portrayed as an ugly old man who doesn’t even resemble an angel. We can see this in paragraph 2, “He was dressed like a rag picker. There were only a few faded hairs left on his bald skull and very few teeth in his mouth…” While Esteban who is a only a dead guy was portrayed as a good looking guy.

Although both short stories, “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, were written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, there are many other differences between the two tales. Both stories were about men who arrived in foreign places and how these men were treated by the people who found them. The old man from the story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” and Esteban from the story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” are apparently opposites of each other.

Throughout human history people have searched for individual identity whether it is by expanding west, or by living off the land, and there are countless other examples of how the place we live has shaped us and vice versa. However, a critical question that must be examined is whether we, as humans, shape the landscape to fit societal norms or is it the other way around; Is it the case that through the values that it imposes on us? With this question in mind, place has an important role in shaping the stories that are written, and as a result, to a moderate degree does place shape not only human character but characters in stories as well.

In Carver’s short story, “So Much Water So Close to Home,” three men go to Naches River for a fishing trip and encounter a dead young woman in the river. Aware that the corpse is in the river, they continue on with their fishing trip, not reporting it until they travel back home. Carver illustrates the story through the eyes of Claire, the wife of the fisher. Carver depicts the differences in male and female roles of a marriage and their psychological similarities, associated with why there was a need to travel to further waters, when there is “So Much Water So Close to Home.”

So when the men returned with the news that the drowned man was not from the neighboring villages either, the women felt an opening of jubilation in the midst of their tears. 'Praise the Lord,' they sighed, he's ours!'” (Marquez, 1972, p. 3). The town falls in love with Esteban, treating him like one of their own, but even better. The women imagine what his life was like before, being so much bigger then everyone else and being more handsome then the rest. They make clothes and jewelry for him and imagine what their lives would be like having him as a husband. The villagers really seem to come together in their admiration of Esteban. Their faith strongly exemplifies the magical realism elements in this story, seeing as normally a reader would expect society to not so readily except something that is so unnatural and uncommon to them.

In the two short stories, “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Garbriel Márquez, the authors demonstrate why society should evolve, Jacobs and Márquez achieve this similarly through characters performing egotistical acts; however, the authors’ strategies diverge as Márquez’s characters are dynamic whereas Jacobs’ are static, and Jacobs’ employs fear whereas Márquez uses hope.

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.

In the essay Santa Ana Joan Didion uses a variety of rhetorical devices to broadcast the idea that the weather can actually set the mood and reputation of a town. She also show cases that the attitude of people around us can have an effect on the way we view things. I can relate to this because most of the time we learn about things it is from our peers, so their attitude will wear off on us when we come into that situation. With this essay she emphasizes that a place can be very important for he because of what it represents. I can agree with her on this because there are several places for me that represent important experiences that I’ve had in my life.

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

The villagers have a fantasy in their mind about the drowned man. They show their admiration and project qualities onto him which they find to be valuable. Many people were paralyzed with regard and attraction which can be shown when Marquiez states, “Fascinated by his huge size and his beauty the women then decided to make him some pants from a large piece of sac…” (Marquiez 3). This shows that the women had such a strong admiration and falling toward this dead old man that even without knowing him, they judged him by his beauty.

Authors get across their ideas by using literary terms. In the story, "Handsomest Drowned Man In The World, Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses change in a character to develop his message that many people, places, and things can change the way you look upon life. For example, Esteban changed the people on the Island by the way they looked at him. The way he looked , as he was laying there lifeless, it changed the women by making them care for others, no matter if they are sad or happy. The story they create about him was how he didn't fit in and people picked on his height and weight. The women changed their houses, and probably the whole Island by making it welcome Esteban's spirit. The way people look upon you or how they act around you can change

The town's women that are to prepare his body for burial get strangely attached to this man who is implied to be very charming and “handsome.” This story is said to have a theme of admiration, however, it may be mistaken as hidden lust. The women decide to name this dead stranger Esteban and begin to characterize him, “ He was the most destitute, most peaceful, and most obliging man on earth, poor Esteban.” This demonstrates the peculiar bewitchment and captivation Esteban has on