BEST SAMPLE SUMMARY, ESSAY AND ANALYSIS OF 'THE HANDSOMEST DROWNED MAN IN THE WORLD'.

 

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.

"The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" is a 1968 short story by Colombian novelist, short story writer, screen writer and journalist, Gabriel García Márquez. He won a Nobel prize (1967) for his masterpiece of magic realism ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’.

This short story is set on a summer day in a small coastal village in South America, it concerns the villagers’ reaction to the discovery of a corpse washed up on a beach. Though no one can identify the man, the villagers imagine who he might have been, and give him a ceremony reveling his life. As they plan, they weave a story about the man’s identity, which grows richer and more intricate until he seems animated and belonging to their world. Though Márquez is best known for his novels, the story is widely considered one of his greatest works. Márquez went on to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

"The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World" begins on an ordinary Wednesday morning in the village, which is made up of only a handful of wooden buildings. A group of children play on the beach, and discover, among the debris washed up from the previous night, the body of a man. The children begin to bury him in the sand; however, the adult villagers soon discover them, and collectively determine that it is appropriate to give him a funeral. Because they have very little land for burials, they plan to throw him off the cliff into the sea at the funeral’s conclusion. However, first the men set out to search for any surviving relatives. The women stay behind to prepare the man’s body for his funeral.

Because the man is very tall, they cannot fit him into a house. They wash the mud and seaweed from his face and, discovering that he is extremely handsome, begin to wonder about his marvelous life. An old woman argues confidently that his name can only have been Esteban, and the rest ultimately agree. After failing to dress him in their too-small, spare clothes, they decide to dress him in custom-made clothes so that he looks dignified. As they do so, they lament that he must have had trouble fitting into small houses. In the man, they begin to see reflections of their own husbands, and begin to weep. They then place a handkerchief over his face.

The men return from their search for the man’s family empty-handed, and rejoin the funeral preparations. The women decorate Esteban with artifacts that have religious meaning, including holy water, nails, and a compass. They imagine that the objects will guide Esteban through the afterlife. Observing this, the men grow angry that the women have grown so attached to the man, whom they still see as a dead body. To show them that he is anything but, the women remove the handkerchief from Esteban’s face. They immediately see in him the same humility and grace that the women saw. The women leave to collect flowers from nearby villages, since their own is only sparsely vegetated. Women from the neighboring villages trickle in to see Esteban. Eventually, the village becomes so crowded that it is difficult to walk without bumping into people

The funeral attendees decide that Esteban should not be buried without a family, since no one should be sent off as an “orphan.” From among the village’s favorite men and women, they select for him a mother and a father. Then, they select an entire extended family of cousins, aunts, and uncles, which expands until everyone has a familial connection to Esteban. They decide not to bury him at sea using an anchor; instead, they choose to send him over the cliff without weights, imagining that he might one day return to their village. At the same time, they begin to realize how small their home is in the grand scheme of things, and how spare and impoverished it is compared to others.

Finally, Esteban is buried at sea. To accommodate their memory of him and the hope of his return, the villagers decide to widen all of their doorways, paint their houses in bright hues, and cultivate beds of flowers all around the village. The villagers hope that someday, a cruise ship will pass by and that its passengers will smell the aroma of their flowers. They imagine that the captain will gesture to the shoreline and tell the passengers that it was where Esteban once lived. "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" is centrally about the role of imagination and hope in civilization-building, showing that the well-being of a community depends on how it acts towards those it knows least, and on those it can only imagine.

Now it’s time to jog our memory. What things stand out in this story?

How do the villagers respond to the encounter with the drowned man?

The story presents three distinct responses to the arrival of the drowned man: the first comes from the children of the village, who find the drowned man on the beach. The children play with the corpse, burying it and digging it up again before an adult interferes. This image might be a melancholic one, but the calm tone of the narrator suggests that there is something natural about the behavior, about children simply behaving like children, innocent and carefree. Second, the women of the village are attracted to the stranger, imagining a magnificent life for him and comparing him to their own husbands. Finally, the men of the village are initially frustrated with the women for paying the drowned man a lot of attention. They themselves are soon won over by the drowned man as well, after they are able to see his face. These responses to the drowned man help underscore the story's interest in community and how the lives of the villagers all interconnect.

 

What eventually happens in the story?

While the story ends with the funeral for the drowned man and the mourning village, it ultimately concludes on a hopeful and uplifting note. The villagers transform their community by building larger houses, painting their homes bright colors, and planting flowers on the cliffs, all in memory of Esteban. The end of the story therefore suggests that Esteban's presence inspired the villagers to embrace their own vitality and fulfill their latent desires for vibrancy and joy while they still have time.

 

Gabriel Garcia Marquez's unique feature in his work is the nature of the storytelling itself. He often employs magical realism in most of his works: Marquez's work explores how narratives develop over generations, and how imagination plays a pivotal role in one's personal narrative. In this particular short story, the people of the village rely on storytelling to imagine the life that the drowned man may have lived, therein imagining for themselves the lives they would like to live after his funeral. This therefore challenges and changes their outlook entirely.

Write an essay to justify the claim that the arrival of someone better than us can inspire us greatly, basing your argument on the short story above. (20marks)

The human trait of dmiration is known to always create an element of Self-Betterment. Humans have this hunger and drive to look the best, sound the best, do the best; it's the competition that's made the world as advanced as it is today. People look up to others and aspire to be like them, which is the reason most people are.
Admiration can be a beautiful thing, as well as a not so beautiful thing. Admiration can motivate someone to be the best they can be and it can also create jealousy and negativity, and cause each other to tear one another down. 

In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, the idea of what it means to be great and what effect this can have on someone, is explored. The author was trying to get the reader to think about what they may believe to be great and how that has shaped their own world. The author writes in a way that makes the reader wonder why the drowned man’s appearance is so excellent.

The women find him extremely handsome, tall, and strong. While, men desire to look like him and be like him. Esteban is this man who washes up into their village and is this amazing person that they all look up to. The story dabbles into the aspects of admiration, something every human has, and gives an example of how drastic it can change things. For instance, an unknown dead man shows up in this town and just by his looks, everyone's lives are changed. This man could have been the most awful man who did unforgivable things, but due to his attractive state, he changed the people of the town's.

             Throughout life there are many things that change or influence our lifestyle. In the short story The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Esteban affects the village in many ways by changing the way they thought, looked at life, and how they lived their lives. He showed the villagers another perspective of life outside the village. Both men and women grew attached to Esteban and all related to him in their own way. The villagers had never seen anything like him and that was the reason of Esteban having such a large impact on the village.
             Esteban was first discovered by a group of children on a sunny day on the beach. They discovered something that would change their village and the people living in it, forever. They realized that there are people different from them in the world and that Esteban was one of them. "When they laid him on the floor, they said he'd been taller than all other men because there was barely enough room for him in the house, but they thought that maybe the ability to keep on growing after death was the nature of certain drowned men." They did not have even have to clean off his face to know that he was a stranger. Esteban was indeed a blessing to the village in the end after all the things he had taught them without even saying a word. After all, it was rare to have visitors in the village from the outside world that is why Esteban had such an impact.
             The arrival of this special guest made the villagers ponder about many things in life that they had never thought about before. They used their imaginations to try to picture how Esteban would spend a day considering if he lived in the village. "They could see him in life, condemned to going throughout doors sideways, cracking his head on crossbeams, remaining on his feet during visits, not knowing what to do with his soft pink sea lion hands while the lady of the house looked for her most resistant chair and begged him to sit down.

In conclsion, human life is made better by the insight gained by interacting with thosebetter than us.

 

 

 

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