The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World

The Transformation of a Fishing Village A drowned man is anything but handsome. In the film “Castaway” made in the year 2000, the main character played by Tom Hanks pulls a drowned man who was his pilot from the sea. He is bloated and his skin is green. He is definitely not a handsome man. Why then would Gabriel Garcia Marquez write a story about a handsome drowned man? Marquez writes a magical story of a man from a faraway land washing up on the shore of a remote village. Though he is dead, the main character Esteban becomes a hero of transformation through characterization, genre of magical realism and setting in the “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”. Marquez illustrates that the people who come into our lives, even in the most unusual circumstances can change our outlook on the world. The drowned man starts off as just a corpse who is found by the children of the village but through his characterization becomes a hero and finally a member of the village’s family. The children see him floating and at first think he is an enemy ship and then a whale. Only when he washes up on the beach do they realize he is a man. The dead man is brought to the village and cared for by the women. At first the women are overtaken by his beauty and physique. Slowly the drowned man becomes Esteban. Marquez is known for writing stories based on real places in Latin America and there “Esteban” is a folk hero known as Estevanico (Davey). He comes to life in their minds as they dress him, comb his hair and cut his nails. They all become his mother as they think of how, “…unhappy he must have been with that huge body since it bothered him even after death” (6.10). Though he is dead, Esteban starts to look, “so much like their men” (6.22) because they can see him as the man he was when he was alive. Soon, the villagers realize the, “…drowned man was becoming all the more Esteban for them, and so they wept so much, for he was the most destitute, most peaceful and most obliging