The handsomest drowned man- examples of realism throughout the story
Marquez's story is representative of the genre of magic realism. This type of work is very imaginative and fun-loving. It can also be meant as "pleasant realism" or a joke upon it, suggesting a new type of fiction--one where we can appreciate, learn, and grow. Basically, it is about a town that finds the body of a dead man wash ashore. He is a stranger to those parts, and being the people they were, the townspeople decide to look more into the person. The men try to find his town, while the women help to clean him up. They realize he is unlike someone they have ever seen--large, massive, and handsome. They create a fixed reality around him, imagining how their lives would have been if he was alive and if he lived in their town. Finally, they decide to let go of the body, and they do so in an elaborate manner. Although the story "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World," contains many examples of magic realism, two examples of this genre come in the introductory paragraph and in the conclusion. With all the magic realism in this story, many questions arise in the reader's mind about how things occur and why things happen in the story.
First of all, one example comes from the type of diction used, as seen in the introductory paragraph. In the paragraph Marquez uses his imagination to talk about fantasy, creating reality. Rather than just telling the audience that a dead body washed up ashore, he lets them explore their creative senses, saying they "[thought] it was an enemy ship," and then "they thought it was a whale," until finally, they realized what the inanimate object was (180). The introduction to the whole narrative is magic realism because it "somehow manages to combine the truthful...with the magic effects we associate with myth, and folk tale" (180). Also, upon referring to children, the subtitle of this story is "A Tale for Children." I believe that this is a type of magic realism in itself because the story is more about how hope and belief grows among
First of all, one example comes from the type of diction used, as seen in the introductory paragraph. In the paragraph Marquez uses his imagination to talk about fantasy, creating reality. Rather than just telling the audience that a dead body washed up ashore, he lets them explore their creative senses, saying they "[thought] it was an enemy ship," and then "they thought it was a whale," until finally, they realized what the inanimate object was (180). The introduction to the whole narrative is magic realism because it "somehow manages to combine the truthful...with the magic effects we associate with myth, and folk tale" (180). Also, upon referring to children, the subtitle of this story is "A Tale for Children." I believe that this is a type of magic realism in itself because the story is more about how hope and belief grows among