The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World PDF

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Hugo Wang Professor Kelley WRT-201-030 10 September, 2021

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” In the passage “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, it tells the story of a foreign man that drowned in a faraway sea and drifted onto an island. The natives on the island find him on the beach one day and bring him into one of their huts. The first thing the natives realize is that the man does not belong to the island. The man, they named Esteban, had to come from far away because he was taller than most of the islanders, his skin tone was different, and he was also larger than the islanders. As they clean him off, they realize that he was one of the most handsomest people they had seen. When they send him off back into the sea, multiple villages come to see him off. Esteban changes this village by giving them a new perspective on the world. Notably the size difference between the drowned man and the natives to the island. In the passage it states that, “They could not find a bed in the village large enough to lay him on nor was there a table solid enough to use for his wake.” This quote suggests that the drowned man was much taller and heavier than the average islander. It also states that, “The men who carried him to the nearest house noticed that he weighed more than any dead man they had ever known, almost as much as a horse.” This quote backs up the idea that he was heavier than the average islander, even though he is dead. The passage also states that, “They thought that if that magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have had the widest doors, the

highest ceiling, and the strongest floor… held together by iron bolts, and his wife would have been the happiest woman.” This suggests that the drowned man is taller than the average islander. This quote also suggests that he is extremely handsome, and that he would have had a position of authority among the people if he had lived on the island. In the passage, it shows that the village has dealt with many deaths by drowning before and that it does not faze them when a dead body washes ashore. It says in the text that, “There was so little land that mothers always went about with the fear that the wind would carry off their children and the few dead that the years had caused among them had to be thrown off the cliffs… when they found the drowned man they simply had to look at one another to see that they were all there.” This quote shows that death is not rare, but also frequent on their island to the point that they have to bury their dead at sea by throwing them off the edge of a cliff. The men looking at each other to make sure that they were all there shows that there have been drownings before in the village. While the men go around to their neighboring villages to see if any of them are missing a person who may have drowned while out at sea, the women of the village clean off the drowned man and sew him clothes to wear. While they are sewing clothes for the drowned man to wear, they start to think about having the drowned man as part of their village. It states in the text that, “If the magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have had the widest doors, the highest ceiling, and the strongest floor, his bedstead would have been made from a midship frame held together by iron bolts, and his wife would have been the happiest woman.” This implies that the women of the village, even though the drowned man which the village elder proclaimed to be named Esteban was dead, they still envisioned him in life while living among them. The passage also says, “They secretly compared him to their own men, thinking that for all

their lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night…” This goes to show that even in death, Esteban was changing the way the women of the village were thinking. When the men came back from the other villages and announced that everyone living in those villages were accounted for, the women of the village were happy. It says in the text, “‘Praise the lord,’ they sighed, ‘he’s ours!’” This goes to show that the women of the village were excited that they had the honors of sending Esteban off back into the sea. As they were preparing to bury Esteban at sea, the women started to find things to do to delay the burying. They brought more and more flowers and put seashells and other items on the dead man. This goes to show how important Esteban is to the women while the men think it is only “womanish frivolity.” However one of the women removes the towel placed on the drowned man’s face and shows why Esteban is so important to the women of the village. During the burial, the women of the village go around collecting more flowers, to the point where they start collecting flowers from neighboring villages. When the women of the other villages heard about what was going on, they did not believe it and had to see for themselves. It says in the text, “Some woman who had gone to get flowers in the neighboring villages returned with other woman who could not believe what they had been told, and those women went back for more flowers when they saw the dead man, and they brought more and more people until there were so many flowers and so many people that it was hard to walk about. This paragraph also showed how much the villages cared about Esteban, even selecting parents. It states, “they chose a father and mother from among the best people, and aunts and uncles and cousins, so that through him, all of the inhabitants of the village became kinsmen.” Esteban helped bring an entire village together, even in death. Every woman in the village became enticed with the way Esteban looked, even in death. They came together to try

and delay the burial of Esteban and when they showed Esteban’s face to the men. Esteban's death not only brought the village together, but brought the entire island together as women went to other villages and brought back more and more people until the cliff was packed to the point where they could not move. When the people of the island let Esteban go back into the waves, they let him go without any weights to weigh him down in case “Esteban could return if he wanted to.” The appearance of Esteban also prompted the village to look at a new perspective. After Esteban’s burial, they said that the doors would be wider and taller so that “Esteban’s memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare whisper the big boob finally died.” Esteban also made the village rethink about how they should make their own village look. It says in the text that, “they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban’s memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas… where the wind is so peaceful now that it’s gone to sleep beneath the beds, ober there, where the sun’s so bright that the sunflowers don’t know which way to turn, yes, other there, that’s Estebans village.” This shows the changes Esteban made to people's lives even in death. Esteban changes the lives of the villagers in many ways. He gives them a whole new perspective to look through and shows them that people are different. He also shows that a simple unfortunate incident can bring people together. Although Esteban was dead, when villagers brought other villagers to look at him, the entire island came together to say goodbye. It made all of the villagers family through Esteban, and brought the island together. Because of Esteban, the village decides to remake their own image and plant gardens, paint their houses

bright happy colors, and make sure that in the future, people would refer to their village as Esteban’s village....