Myth and the Human Condition
"The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" illustrates humanity's tendency to craft myths. The narrative's style underscores that the "long ago and far away" setting is more significant than identifying the village's precise location or time period. Myths often center around heroic individuals whose remarkable abilities or deeds set an example for others to follow. Esteban becomes such an ideal for the villagers, inspiring them to cultivate beautiful gardens and renovate their homes "so that Esteban's memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams." This once unremarkable drowned man motivates an entire village to strive for greater beauty and improvement. These myths persist across time and cultures, as shown at the story's end when it is predicted that captains of passenger ships will point out "Esteban's village" to curious travelers.
The story highlights the human imagination's drive to make sense of the unknown. Much of the narrative depicts the village women fabricating stories about Esteban's life and imagining what it would be like to live with him: "They thought that if that magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have had the widest doors, the highest ceiling, and the strongest floor, his bedstead would have been made from a midship frame held together by iron bolts, and his wife would have been the happiest woman." Through their imagination, Esteban transforms from being admirable to beloved, and ultimately to being cherished by everyone. He becomes a symbol for the entire village, and during his funeral, they assign him relatives in such a way "that through him all the inhabitants of the village became kinsmen." This gesture highlights another aspect of the human condition: the desire to connect with others. By returning Esteban to the sea, the villagers recognize the ocean as a link, a connection to other people and distant lands, including the far-off place from which the drowned man came.
Beauty and Aesthetics
The drowned man's importance to the village is deeply connected to how the villagers perceive his beauty. Initially, when he is discovered washed up on the shore, covered in seaweed and dirt, the local children view him simply as a peculiar plaything. However, it is only after the village women begin to clean him that they notice his remarkable strength and attractiveness. They are so captivated by his physical presence that "there was no room for him in their imagination." Yet soon, their imaginations soar, attributing qualities of pride, authority, and a gentle, considerate nature to him. Esteban's beauty stirs their emotions, prompting a sympathetic response. His striking size and appearance starkly contrast with their own men, who seem "the weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth" in comparison, as well as with the village itself. The villagers' hastily constructed homes and barren courtyards on a small, desolate strip of land mirror their limited understanding and lack of imagination beyond mere survival. Esteban introduces beauty to the village, sparking a profound change in the villagers' character. Their readiness to accept Esteban and claim him as one of their own, only to "lose" him at the funeral, instills a sense that life holds more than mere existence—there is beauty, something deeply extraordinary. Consequently, Esteban's story becomes a narrative about the transformative power of beauty in the villagers' lives.
Comparison to One Hundred Years of Solitude
It is easy, in a cynical fashion, to make fun of the villagers in this little story, which Gabriel García Márquez wrote shortly after finishing his great masterpiece, Cien anios de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1970). One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles the rise and decline of Macondo, a mythical city representing Latin American...
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society in the period of independence. In some ways, the fishing village in this story is a stripped-down Macondo: The villagers are even more backward, provincial, ignorant, and gullible than the inhabitants of Macondo. Their village is the center of the universe, so instead of moving to a more promising location, they resolve to “break their backs” to turn a rocky promontory into a rose garden. They are inspired by a waterlogged corpse and led by emotional women. For all they know, the drowned man was a scoundrel, and there is no guarantee that their resolutions will ever lead to anything, that the rose garden will become a reality. IfOne Hundred Years of Solitude mirrors the history of Latin America’s big hopes and bigger failures, is this story a boiled-down version of how the historical cycle begins?
Imagination as a Solution
The answer is no. “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” is not so much a repetition of One Hundred Years of Solitude as a coda with a counterpoint theme. The story takes an even more unpromising situation than the one in Macondo and proposes a solution. The solution is the imagination, which might be circumscribed by circumstances but can be stimulated by outside influences, represented by the drowned man. In One Hundred Years of Solitude, an obsession with incest suggests cultural inbreeding and degeneracy; here, the villagers become kinsmen only through their imagined relationships with the corpse. What does it matter that the corpse is waterlogged, possibly a former scoundrel? He still inspires the villagers to see their desolate lives and try to fill them with beauty. He is the poor villagers’ Grecian urn.
Imagination and the Unconscious
As a story about the imagination, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” has some powerful undercurrents appealing to the unconscious. The drowned man’s long journey through the ocean deeps suggests the mysterious workings of the imagination. The drowned man is also an old motif in literature, where he frequently has positive associations, representing the preferred form of death (with overtones of baptism and spiritual rebirth, as in T. S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land, 1922) or even the triumph of the imagination over death (as in William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, 1611: “Those are pearls that were his eyes”). Here the drowned man’s handsome looks symbolize such a triumph, as does his effect on the villagers. The story is a reminder that most of the people who inspire the world are dead.
Accessibility and Imagination
Finally, one does not have to know anything about Latin American history, One Hundred Years of Solitude, the unconscious, or García Márquez in order to appreciate “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” The reader can readily enjoy this story without these outside references, which merely provide its rich context. It is, at heart, a fable of the imagination. The English version of the story is appropriately subtitled “A Tale for Children,” just as it is appropriate that the village children should discover the drowned man. They show the most imagination among the villagers, followed by the women, though ultimately everyone’s imagination is sparked.
