THE HANDSOMEST DROWNED MAN IN

THE WORLD

Prepared by:

John Romy P. Delfin

IV-BSPT

TOPIC OUTLINE• About the Author

• Plot Analysis

• Characters

• Setting and Conflict

• Symbolism

• Style

• Theme

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

GABRIEL JOSÉ DE LA CONCORDIA GARCIA MARQUEZ

• 6 March 1928 – 17 April 2014

• Colombian novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter, and journalist (Gabo)

• One of the most significant authors of the 20th century

• 1982 – received Nobel Prize in Literature

• Wrote One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985)

PLOT ANALYSIS

• Exposition

• Rising Action

• Climax

• Falling Action

• Resolution

EXPOSITION

The body of the “Handsomest Drowned Man” is discovered on shore by the children.

RISING ACTION

• The women clean and dress the drowned man, and prepare him for funeral.

They decide to call him ‘Esteban’

• The women comment on how handsome Esteban is, and compare him to their husbands

The husbands become jealous of Esteban

RISING ACTION

• Women realize that Esteban “… must have been [unhappy] with [his] huge body”

They begin to pity Esteban

• Men confront women over Esteban, claiming there need not be such a fuss over a dead man.

• Upon seeing Esteban’s face, they recognize his humanity, and how ashamed he must have been, causing everyone so much trouble

CLIMAX

• Esteban’s funeral is held• Once they realize Esteban is going to leave them, the villagers become aware of how desolate and dry their village and dreams are, when compared to the grandeur of Esteban• Esteban put to rest in ocean

FALLING ACTION

• Villagers realize that without Esteban, “[…]they were no longer all present, that they would never be”

RESOLUTION

• Villagers propose changes to village made to honor Esteban Houses built with “[…]wider doors, higher ceilings,

and stronger floors, so that if so that Esteban’s memory could go everywhere”

Flowers planted to so that Esteban’s memory would be acknowledged by any passing sailors

CHARACTERS

• Esteban

• Villagers

• Men

• Women

ESTEBAN

• Drowned in ocean, washes up in small fishing village• Not known by anyone in village or surrounding villages• Taller and more handsome than any of the men of the

village

ESTEBAN

• Dynamic character• At first appears to be some sort of extraordinary

being, perfect in every aspect, being the “[…]tallest, strongest, most virile, and best-built man they had ever seen” • Later, when women of the village realize that he

probably struggled to completer everyday tasks with his epic size, he suddenly becomes “[…]so defenseless, so much like their men that he opened the first furrows in their hearts”

ESTEBAN

• Described from the village women's point of view, exists as they describe him• Described as if he was alive

VILLAGERS

• 3rd person narrator describes Esteban as he appears in the eyes of the Villagers

VILLAGERS: WOMEN

• Adore Esteban, compare their husbands to him• Provide only description of Esteban in story• Protagonists, as they support Esteban, because he did not mean to bring any trouble to the village

VILLAGERS: MEN

• Initially dislike Esteban’s presence, because their wives compare Esteban to them• Antagonists, as they detest Esteban and all the trouble he causes the village

• Come to like Esteban when they see that “[…]he was ashamed, that it was not his fault that he was so big or so heavy or so handsome […]”

SETTING AND CONFLICT

• Setting

• Place

• Conflict

SETTING: PLACE

• The story takes place on a barren fishing village with cliff around it near the sea with a group of simple

people.

CONFLICT

• Man (Village Women) vs. Man (Village Men)

SYMBOLISMS AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGES

• Esteban

• Allusions

• Imagery

• Simile

• Metaphor

• Personification

ESTEBAN

• Esteban represents the Greek Titan Prometheus who gave fire to mankind and as punishment was chained to a mountain and is the “messenger of hope, beauty, and solidarity” (McMurray)• Esteban’s gift, instead of fire, was kindness and sincerity.• Esteban’s physique matches that of Prometheus

ESTEBAN = HOPE AND CHANGE

• “[…] men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man” • “Esteban’s departure creates an awareness of the

emptiness of their own lives have been. They believe, however, that things will change from the size of the buildings in the town to the flowers that will be cultivated, everything will be better in the town” (Williams 97).

ALLUSION

• The story alludes to Homer’s Odyssey – mentions the Sirens.

“Some sailors who heard the weeping from a distance went off course, and people heard of one who had himself tied to the mainmast, remembering ancient fables about sirens”

• Refers to the crying during Esteban’s funeral and the crying is like the luring songs of the sirens.

• Esteban is a “myth”

IMAGERY

• “He had the smell of the sea about him, and only his shape gave one to suppose that it was the corpse of a human being, because the skin was covered with a crust of mud and scales”

SIMILE

• “They walked about like startled hens, pecking with the sea charms on their breasts, some interfering on one side to put a scapular of the good wind on the drowned man”

METAPHOR

• The village was made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers and which were spread about on the end of a desert-like cape”

PERSONIFICATION

• “[The captain] would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, over there, that's Esteban's village” • “They wanted to tie the anchor from a cargo ship to

him so that he would sink easily into the deepest waves, where fish are blind and divers die of nostalgia and bad currents would not bring him back to shore”

STYLE

Magical Realism

MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• Esteban’s appearance and physical features seem unreal and impossible.• He is very handsome although he is dead.• He is very tall and large.

MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• The villager’s reaction to Esteban also emphasize the magical elements.• “That a dead man can have so much influence on a

village full of people who seem to find drowning victims on their beach creates a sense that this event is something extraordinary” (Wilson, ed. 83).

MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• The setting and unanswered questions that pertain to the story also adhere to its magical elements.• “The mythical namelessness of the village and the

historically vague setting add to this perception” (Wilson, ed. 83).

MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• “The village seems to be like a fairytale land since it has no definite location and the people are isolated from the outside world” (Wilson, ed. 83).• Not only does the village have an unknown name and location, but the villagers are also nameless. It is significant that Esteban is given a name and the villagers are not because it means that Esteban is more important than the villagers.

REALISTIC ELEMENTS

• The man later known as Esteban is found dead by the ocean.

• The basic setting of an ocean is ideally realistic.

• The villagers and the village itself is ideal because they are ordinary people living in a stable but prehistoric environment.

• The villagers have a funeral for Esteban.

PURPOSES

• The purpose of the unidentifiable land is to show how the land relates to the lives of the villagers. The villagers do not have fun. They live life dry and miserable. Their land is similar in that it is small, boring, and dull.

PURPOSES

• The purpose of Esteban is to show how a village can come together and work hard to improve their lives. He shows the reader how life can change and how it should be because he himself is not ordinary. Because of the differences between him and the villagers, Esteban shows how being different is a reward.

TREATMENT

• Esteban is treated like a stereotype. He is the typical hero in a fairytale.• “Oftentimes in our culture, celebrities live lives

completely removed from ours, yet people sit around fascinated by them. They endlessly discuss their beauty, their clothing, and what they do with their time. And here, we have this same thing happening. This handsome drowned man who lived his entire life completely removed from this tiny village is suddenly now almost being worshipped by the villagers” (Renee).

TREATMENT

• Esteban is presented as a “perfect man.”• The women compare their men to Esteban and

believe that they are no match compared to him. • “They make assumptions based on Esteban's looks

and begin to fantasize about his accomplishments” (Renee).• “The women’s thoughts and constant pondering

over Esteban is very much like the fawning over today’s celebrities. In this world we often categorize people into Angelina Jolies or Brad Pitts and consider them to be perfect in all aspects of their lives. This is very much like how the village women treat Esteban. He is a celebrity to them” (Renee).

CHARACTERS’ REACTION

• At the beginning of the story, the villagers thought nothing of their land and took no pride or care of it.

• At the end of the story, the villagers analyze their homeland and use the resources they have to plant flowers on cliffs, dig for springs, make their house door wider, their ceilings higher, their floors stronger, and the front doors painted with cheerful colors.

CHARACTERS’ REACTION

• The village women are most impressed with Esteban because he is the tallest, strongest, most virile, and most best-built man in the village. He is also very handsome and appears to be a peaceful and proud man, although poor.

CHARACTERS’ REACTION

• The village men, however, want to get rid of Esteban as soon as possible. When the take a look at him and consider how and why the women are so impressed by him, the come to an understanding that Esteban is a special person who must be honored and loved.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN REAL AND MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• Real feelings; love, pity, jealousy, frustration• It is the women who magically and imaginatively

create his name, Esteban, and his life story• Part of the magic of the story is the way their

imaginations stretch to accommodate the wonder of Esteban• “They thought would have had so much authority

that he could have drawn fish out of the sea simply by calling their names and […] springs would have burst forth from among the rocks”

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN REAL AND MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• Extraordinary height, their imaginations create the possibility that "maybe the ability to keep on growing after death was part of the nature of certain drowned men"

• Seen through the gaze of the villagers, their ordinary world takes on extraordinarily small and meager proportions, from their beds, to their clothes to their men

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN REAL AND MAGICAL ELEMENTS

• Yet, it also made kinsmen of them all, symbolizing how their encounter with his extraordinary body transforms the ordinary village, leaving magic in their lives long after he has gone, as their minds, lives, houses and streets are forever transformed by his uncommon presence

• “She always includes details that give reality to fantasy, help us believe in the unbelievable”. -Peter S. Prescott, a reviewer for Newsweek

DREAMLIKE QUALITIES

• From the size of the beds to the size of the shoes available amongst the villagers, there was nothing big enough or strong enough to fit the drowned man• The men made such references as his body weighing

as much as a "horse," a house was not big enough for his body• They thought that the night's steady wind and the

restless sea had something to do with the handsomest drowned man

DREAMLIKE QUALITIES

• "But they also know that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams, and so that no one in the future would ever dare whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died“ (706).• “…and the hidden strength of his heart popped the

buttons on his shirt”

DREAMLIKE QUALITIES

• Children had no idea he was a dead man so in the beginning they used him to play with

-when the adults discovered their gruesome play-mate, they hardly recognized him as a man because of all the crust, mud, and scales on him• “The Handsomest Drowned Man illustrates the manner

in which Gabriel Garcia Marquez utilizes a heroic figure to revolutionize mundane reality” (160) – George R. McMurray

THEME

Myth and Human Condition

Beauty and Aesthetics

MYTH AND HUMAN CONDITION

• The tendency for people to create myths

- The human imagination seeks the explanation for the unknown (Wilson, ed. 82)

“They thought that if that magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have been made form a mid-ship frame held together by iron bolts, and his wife would have been the happiest woman”

BEAUTY AND AESTHETICS

• A person of beauty often receives more respect

- The villagers realize the lack of beauty in their own village (Wilson, ed. 82)

“But only when they finished cleaning him off did they become aware of the kind of man he was, and it left them breathless”

“They were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs […]”