Review of 'The Handsomest Drowned Man in The World' by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is renowned as a Colombian novelist who introduced the world to the genre of literature known as Magical Realism in his short stories. Magical realism concerns the overlap of the fantastical with reality; the occurrence of magic and myth in the day-to-day grind of living. The protagonists accept these elements into their lives, and the reader accepts them in the story through the use of a naturalistic tone. Having grown up and raised by his grandparents whom he accredits for most of his success for at the time that he was growing up his parents were not allowed to be together, Gabriel Garcia Marquez is known across the world as a man after the real-life experiences that shaped him into moving into the journey of a journalist and finally have a point in which he is the guru behind the literature genre of Magical Realism in storytelling. A master revolutionary that claims his stories were based on nothing but real-life experiences that were more bizarre than anything that he would have invented. Some of these real-life experiences have been settings for his novels in his hometown of Ara Cataca – Macondo like “A 100 years of Solitude”.

Though this may be one of his best - selling novels of all time during his lifetime, some of his more acclaimed works in orders of short stories speak volumes in the nowadays society as it did when he was growing up. He has been able to inspire millions across the world with his writing and articulate symbolism. Not only has Gabriel Garcia Marquez been expansive in his short stories, but he has helped bridge the gap of addressing and inspiring society through the various notions of symbolism and imagery that he uses in each of his vast library of short stories. Such an example of a short narrative is “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”. Marquez is one of the most important authors of the Magical Realism movement and this short story has all the certifications and embodies this genre.

In the short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, Marquez sets a scene of an island where a village and in extension the villagers have a small living settlement entity that consists of squeezed houses. This settlement has at least twenty-odd wooden houses with stone courtyards and no flowers that hang on a desert-like cape with no sight of anything growing there. This is further shown in the description of the cape that the villagers cannot even bury their dead, but rather throw them over the cliffs of the cape. In their daily living, the body of a drowned man washes up on their shores and the children of the village run-up to play with him just because of their naivety and curiosity. The parents rather are ready to deal with this new development on their shore and on pulling him out of the water and noticing that the man is dead.

As accustomed, the women slowly start picking out the debris off the drowned man to prepare him for burial and in between this they unearth the shell of whom the drowned man is. Instantly, dormant sexual feeling arises from the women that get to a point that they find him deafeningly beautiful. At first, they find it hard to even process what they see as Marquez states that “He leaves them breathless ... there is no room of him in their imagination' with this comes to a spark of imagination from the villagers who continue to imagine what it would be like to have the drowned man – whom they now call Esteban – in the village with them. The men become a little jealous and overwhelmed of Esteban as they carry him across to the cliffs of the cape, but soon after realizing that them as a village can do better upon the awakening of an imaginative desire in them; the villagers take up arms to better themselves. By the end of the short story, Marquez emphasizes that the village has been transformed into a more lively place than it was prior to Esteban’s arrival at their shores.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his depiction in the short story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” narrates and shows a connection with anyone who reads the piece as a connection to his life and what is around him. The theme of transformation that

Marquez uses shows not only his personal journey from a small native town in rural Colombia to a global stage honoured by his writing but also shows the transformation of oneself through each life process that we go through to get to the point of achieving greatness. Through the reading of the story, Marquez's writing can be seen to go through all the emotions from jealousy and admiration to instances of self-understanding and realization to do better: a transformational part that he holds dear in his process of sharing his experiences.

Marquez's way of narration presents an omniscient intrusive style of narration that shows him as an all-knowing, all-seeing narrator, but also gives the readers a chance to interact with the characters in the story and get to understand what they are thinking. Looking back at his career as a journalist before being a novelist, Marquez was able to interact with people to get information on real-life experiences that were happening on the ground and later narrate that in line with what the readers of the newspapers would have understood and get more engagement with the daily know-how of the state of Colombia. This is also emphasized by his sense of hyperbole and over-exaggeration to capture the reader's mind and interest.

The plot of the short narrative portrays a small barren caped village with inhabitants who know each other to the core as the case of learning that none of them drowned by just looking around. There is a dramatic shift in realization from a small, barren circumscribed world into a broad, open, rich and plentiful world as a result of the arrival of Esteban to the village shore and their eye-opening experience to do better for themselves. This same self-drive is what made Marquez have a desire to move on from just journalism to be able to tell stories of people and real-life experiences that everyone would relate and be in touch.

The naming of the drowned man as Esteban is a close representation and appreciation of Marquez to his South – American heritage. He depicts Esteban who according to history was one of the first South American heroes and explorers to set foot in the new world and open the eyes of fellow slaves to a new world that was filled with new possibilities. Esteban in the short narrative poses as a symbol of unity and realization that the villagers have far more potential to do and be better with the existence of a world full of growth and new possibilities. This is depicted by the realization of the villagers that if the drowned a can grow even after death, they as a people and as a village have a far better chance to grow and develop while they are still alive.

“The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” is a simple story, told in a naturalistic style but with considerable symbolic value. As the village is awoken from its sleep by this agent of change, so too can we all. If we look upon others with passion, with compassion, without jealousy; if we set our sights higher, we too can live in the village of roses, the world alive with possibility. This is evident that by Esteban’s presence, the village is transformed into the most beautiful village, a village filled with sunlight and in Marquez’s words, the most peaceful village.

In the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez; “It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, but they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” This beckons us as human beings to always pursue our dreams in becoming not only better as individuals but to the broad realization that we can do more and better than what we are channelling and producing at the moment.