Meaning of the The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World - Essay Example

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: This paper is primarily based on a brief discussion about the meaning of the short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The most distinguished aspect of this short story is the excessive use of symbols for explaining the theme of the story and illuminating various concepts like beauty, life, death, dignity, and admiration. Marquez has not employed the symbolic language in his book without thinking, rather the symbolism effectively wraps around the thinking and imagination of the story’s characters, and nearly every major symbol has a deep underlying message to it, which can be easily appreciated by the readers.

Marquez has effectively used this story to explain how the arrival of a dead body on the beach of a small village stimulates the aesthetic and creative senses of the inhabitants of those village. This means that the washed up man had the qualities of a hero due to which the villagers get inspired by his beauty so much that they decide to restore their houses, build up their village, and demand beauty themselves. The story tells how a drowned man who was once hidden and nothing to world, ultimately inspires an entire village to live creatively and strive for a better life.

The story is basically about a man who drowns in the water owing to ill fate, dies, and later his seaweed covered body appears on the beach of a small village. Initially, the children play with the poor corpse until the elders find the body and decide to give him a proper funeral after which the body must be thrown into the sea, as a custom. This man is named Esteban by the villagers later, who appear to be excessively awed and astounded by Esteban’s manly features and overwhelming perfection of face.

Even the villagers’ wives take a liking to the beauty of Esteban’s body and start comparing his beauty with their husbands’, due to which the men show disapproval for the mysterious man. Still, they themselves cannot resist the charm of the washed up man, and decide to cover his body with linen so that the dignity of the body can be maintained. Through this gesture, Marquez attempts to explain the diverse meaning of death, which is not something that is known to all in the world. This is just like he attempts to explain the meaning of beauty and jealousy beforehand by purposely showing the attitude of the women towards the washed up body of the man as a result of which their men become jealous of the way their women showed passion for the body’s apparent beauty.

The myth symbol is also very important to the story because when the villagers strive to find out about the dead man’s whereabouts but can find nothing, they willingly give their own history to the dead man, just to cover the deficiency of not knowing anything. According to (Moore, 2008), the story “symbolizes how their encounter with his extraordinary body transforms the ordinary village, leaving a touch of magic on their existence long after he has gone.” Reference: Moore, D. (2008). Literary analysis: The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

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