Religiosity in the Lens of a Magical Reality: A Historical-Biographical Reading of The Handsomest

Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Percival Paras
In 1968, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a Colombian born writer and activist, wrote the short story The
Handsomest Drowned Man in the World – a story of a small community who turned full devotion to an
unknown drowned man. Although the story is plainly written, there are historical and biographical
underpinnings that can be uncovered as one seeks to dig deeper into Marquez’s Magical Realism.
To begin with, Magic Realism is a literary style that combines elements of magic in reality.
Matthew Strecher (1999) defines magic realism as "what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting
is invaded by something too strange to believe." This literary style is popular among Latin American
writers, as well as in Japan. Although Japanese writers may embed magic realism as a purely creative
literary style, Latin American fictions have been tainted with magic realism both for creativity and its
utility – particularly their historical setting.
Guerin, et.al (1966) posits that the main trust of the historical-biographical approach is to “see
literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author’s times or the life and times of the
characters in the work.” As Taine puts it, “race, milieu, et moment. (Guerin, et.al, 1966). In Marquez’s
fiction, however, it takes careful laying bare to deal with its milieu, as the narrative is covered with magic
realism.
The story opened with children playing in the shore, on a normal day, when they saw the
drowned man. Naïve and innocent as they were, they played with the drowned man’s body all afternoon,
until they were seen by a man, who in turn, asked other men to carry the body to the village. Later that
night, the women took care of the drowned man, and after cleaning his body, they breathlessly described
the man as follows: “Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever
seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination.” These
details of the story, I believe, is significant in unfolding the allusion Marquez is presenting.

Catholicism in the Lens of The Latin Americans

The women’s description of the drowned man in the story is a key to decoding the parallel of the
character to reality. As the women exclaimed, the drowned man is close to being “perfect”, majestic,
powerful, and full of charisma. This dead man, later on, has influenced the way the villagers live their
lives. With this, an allusion to Christianity, particularly of the Catholic teaching, can be made: making the
drowned man a parallel of Jesus as the central figure of the Christian faith. In Biblical accounts, Jesus was
put to death to pay for humanity’s sins. This image of a “dead God” became iconic all across the globe for
its message of spiritual salvation.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez grew up as a religious kid, who, later, turned activist. His criticism of
religion, particularly of Christianity, is significant in reading his stories. Parallel to the historical
background of Latin America (South America), Christianity came to their shores, brought by the White
(European) people. This Christianizing of the entire continent has led them to conquering the entire South
American continent.
 Historical data suggest that for most of the 20th century, from 1900 through the 1960s, at least
90% of Latin America’s population was Catholic. (Pew Research Center, 2014). This faith has become
front and center of the daily lives of the Latinos, including their political, cultural and social interactions.
During the year the story was written, the Pope visited Colombia. In the same year, a major
change in the political arena was made – giving birth to a third political party. With all these, Colombia
remained a country under poverty, drugs, and violence. Murillo and Avirama (2004) accounts these
conflicts, despite their strong Catholic beliefs: “The Colombian Conflict began in the mid-1960s and is a
low-intensity asymmetric war between Colombian governments, paramilitary groups, crime syndicates,
and left-wing guerrillas such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), and the National
Liberation Army (ELN), fighting each other to increase their influence in Colombian territory. (Murillo
and Avirama, 2004)
With all of these conflicts, Marquez paints a picture of how his people devoted themselves to a
faith that has the power to change their personal lives but remains untransformed as a village – as a
community… as a nation. Hence, a blind faith it has been.
In the story, an enormous funeral was made for the non-decaying body of the handsomest
drowned man, making all the villagers pay homage. Using magic realism, the impossible reality of a dead
person not decaying is made real. Such is also an allusion to the body of the Christ, who was claimed
dead by Biblical accounts, yet remained alive. Men, women and children all gathered to worship and
adore the dead body. Although the dead man has not done anything significant, the characters in the story
all had an “experience” of him, making them fully devoted to a dead, unknown person. Similarly,
Marquez, I believe, is making an allusion of how the Latinos embraced a dead, unknown “god” as
introduced by the colonizers.
Another significant detail of the story is how Marquez used Esteban as an intertextual identity in
the narrative. Esteban is a known figure in Africa for being the first black man to travel the world. With
this, we can see the deliberate use of a non-White figure, which I believe is a reaction against the White’s
narrative, as well as the parallel of a traveler in relation to the dead man. This signifies how a “dead
person/god” has travelled the entire world through the Christianization of many nations, including
Colombia.
Conclusion
Laying bare the literary device of magic realism, one can see the parallel of Garcia Marquez’s
milieu and the events in the story. As we draw closer to the details of the story, we can see the intention
of the author in using the dead man as a central figure of the story, parallel to the “dead god” the catholic
faith has brought to their shores, at least in the perspective of Marquez, and among the doubting Latin
Americans. As we uncover the magical, we will see the blindness of people in conforming their lives to
that of a dead person. Similarly, as a representation of Colombian history, this same blind faith has led
them to irrationally accepting a foreign belief, making their people align their lives to someone dead.
References:

Guerin, Wilfred, Earle Labor, Lee Morgan, and John R. Willingham. (1966) A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Oxford University
Press. p.51

Murillo, Mario; Jesús Rey Avirama (2004). Colombia and the United States: war, unrest, and destabilization. Seven Stories Press. p. 54. ISBN
978-1-58322-606-3.

Pew Research Center (2014) Retrieved from https://www.pewforum.org/2014/11/13/religion-in-latin-america/

Strecher, Matthew C. (1999), Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki, Journal of Japanese Studies,
Volume 25, Number 2, pp. 263-298, at 267.