I.

Biography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez Gabriel Jos Garca Mrquez was born on March 6, 1928, to Luisa Santiaga Marquez Iguaran and Gabriel Eligio Garcia in Aracataca, Colombia. The prized author and journalist is known to many as simply Gabo. With lyricism and marked wisdom, Marquez has been recognized as one of the most remarkable storytellers of the 20th century. Luisa's parents did not approve of her marriage to a telegraph operator, and her son Gabriel, the oldest of twelve children, was sent to live with his maternal grandparents. Marquez later would claim that his love of story-telling came from his grandparents. On December 6, in the Cienaga train station, about 3,000 striking banana workers were shot and killed by troops from Antioquia. The incident was officially forgotten, and it is omitted from Colombian history textbooks. Although Marquez was still a baby, this event was to have a profound effect on his writing. When Marquez was eight years old, his grandfather died. At that time it was also clear that his grandmother, who was going blind, was increasingly helpless. He was sent to live with his parents and siblings, whom he barely knew, in Sucre. A bright pupil, he won scholarships to complete his secondary education at the Colegio Nacional. There he discovered literature and admired a group of poets called the piedra y cielo ("stone and sky"). This group included Eduardo Carranza, Jorge Rojas, and Aurelio Arturo, and their literary grandfathers were Juan Ramon Jimenez and Pablo Neruda. In 1946, Marquez entered law school at the National University of Bogota. There he began reading Kafka and publishing his first short stories in leading liberal newspapers. Marquez's literary career was sparked, oddly enough, by the long period of political violence and repression known in Colombia as la violencia. On April 9, 1948, the assassination of the Liberal presidential candidate led to three days of riots. One of the buildings that burned was Marquez's pension, and his manuscripts were destroyed along with his living quarters. The National University was closed, and Marquez was forced to go elsewhere. He went to the university in Cartagena and took up journalism to support himself. In 1950 he abandoned his legal studies and began writing columns and stories for El Heraldo, a Liberal newspaper. He also began associating with a group of young writers in the area, who admired modernists like Joyce, Woolf, and Hemingway and who introduced Marquez to Faulkner. In 1954 he returned to Bogota as a reporter for El Espectador. Marquez's first novel, Leaf Storm, was published by a small Bogota press in 1955. That year he also began attending meetings of the Colombian Communist Party and traveling to Europe as a foreign correspondent. He also wrote his second novel, In Evil Hour, and began work on a collection of short stories called No One Writes to the Colonel. In 1956, Marquez was in Paris as a correspondent for El Espectador when he learned that the dictator Rojas Pinalla had closed the newspaper. Stuck in France, Marquez cashed in his return plane ticket, went hunting for journalism work, and collected bottles to help pay the cost of his rent. The next year he managed to travel to Eastern Europe and secure an editor position at a newspaper in Caracas. In 1958 he returned to Barranquilla to marry Mercedes Barcha, his childhood sweetheart. (He claimed that she was 13 when he first proposed.) They lived together in Caracas from 1957 to 1959, while Marquez continued to work as a journalist and wrote fiction.

On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro's guerrilla revolution triumphed and the fighters marched into Havana. This revolution was of crucial importance to contemporary Latin American history, and its impact on Marquez cannot be overstated. That year he became the Bogota correspondent for Prensa Latina, the new Cuban news agency. Also of note that year-this becomes of importance in One Hundred Years of Solitude--was the birth of his first child, Rodrigo, on August 24. Marquez spent the next two years in the United States working for Prensa Latina. In 1961 he won the Esso Literary Prize in Colombia for In Evil Hour. When the book was republished in Madrid a year later with unauthorized language changes, he repudiated the edition. For four years, Marquez wrote no new fiction and was subject to derision for his writer's block. Instead, he concentrated on raising his family (his son Gonzalo was born in April 1962) and writing screenplays, one of them with the famed Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes. In January 1965, his writer's block broke on a family trip to Acapulco. He turned the car around, drove back to the home they were staying at in Mexico, and barricaded himself there for, as he claims, "15 months." When he emerged, the 1967 book One Hundred Years of Solitude was immediately hailed as a classic. It was an incredible popular success as well and at one point was selling out an edition every week. It was published in English in 1970 and won many prizes in various countries. One Hundred Years of Solitude is commonly accepted as Marquez's greatest work, as well as a literary masterpiece. It became known as the turning-point work between modernism and postmodernism, and it helped to revive the novel. The publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude also predicted the success of other Latin American novelists, marking the end of Western domination of the novel. In 1973, following the assassination of Chile's president Salvador Allende, Marquez decided to take a more active political role. He founded a left-wing magazine, Alternativa, in Bogota and participated in the Russell Tribunal to publicize human rights abuses in Latin America. In 1975, he published The Autumn of the Patriarch and traveled frequently to Havana, where he prepared a book on Cuban life under the U.S. blockade. He also established personal relationships with Fidel Castro and the Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos, and in 1978 he established a human rights organization in Mexico City. Three important events happened for Marquez in 1981. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor, the highest decoration France gives to a foreigner. After a warning that the Colombian military had accused him of conspiring with guerrillas, he was forced to seek asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Bogota. Finally, he published Chronicle of a Death Foretold. In 1982, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature. He used the money to start a daily newspaper, El Otro, in Colombia, after the Colombian government promised him that he would be safe in Colombia. In the 1980s and 1990s, Marquez lived in Mexico City and Colombia. He continued to take an active role in politics and organization, and in 1986 he organized the Foundation of New Latin American Cinema in Havana. He also wrote screenplays, plays, and two novels: Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) and The General in his Labyrinth (1989). As the century closed, he continued to live in Colombia and write, although under heavy security for fear of kidnapping or other crimes with which he has been threatened. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has many trademarks in his novels. For instance, both Chronicle of a Death Foretold and One Hundred Years of Solitude start out in medias res, or in the middle

of things, with a declaration that their protagonists are going to die in the novel. Also, Marquez often uses events and characters from his own life in his books. For example, Mercedes Barcha, his wife, is in Chronicle of a Death Foretold under her own name as the narrator's young wife. The narrator even says he proposed to her as soon as she finished primary school, much like the real-life Mercedes Barcha. Luisa Santiaga is the name of both the narrator's mother in the book and Marquez's mother in reality. Marquez's brother is named Luis Enrique; both the narrator and Marquez have a sister who is a nun. Gabriel Garcia Marquez has been suffering from lymphatic cancer and is receiving treatment. He remains active in Latin American politics.

II. Short Story Analysis A. The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World The first children who saw the dark and slinky bulge approaching through the sea let themselves think it was an enemy ship. Then they saw it had no flags or masts and they thought it was a whale. But when it washed up on the beach, they removed the clumps of seaweed, the jellyfish tentacles, and the remains of fish and flotsam, and only then did they see that it was a drowned man. They had been playing with him all afternoon, burying him in the sand and digging him up again, when someone chanced to see them and spread the alarm in the village. The men who carried him to the nearest house noticed that he weighed more than any dead man they had ever known, almost as much as a horse, and they said to each other that maybe he'd been floating too long and the water had got into his bones. When they laid him on the floor they said he'd been taller than all other men because there was barely enough room for him in the house, but they thought that maybe the ability to keep on growing after death was part of the nature of certain drowned men. He had the smell of the sea about him and only his shape gave one to suppose that it was the corpse of a human being, because the skin was covered with a crust of mud and scales. They did not even have to clean off his face to know that the dead man was a stranger. The village was made up of only twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards with no flowers and which were spread about on the end of a desert like cape. There was so little land that mothers always went about with the fear that the wind would carry off their children and the few dead that the years had caused among them had to be thrown off the cliffs. But the sea was calm and bountiful and all the men fitted into seven boats. So when they found the drowned man they simply had to look at one another to see that they were all there. That night they did not go out to work at sea. While the men went to find out if anyone was missing in neighbouring villages, the women stayed behind to care for the drowned man. They took the mud off with grass swabs, they removed the underwater stones entangled in his hair, and they scraped the crust off with tools used for scaling fish. As they were doing that they noticed that the vegetation on him came from faraway oceans and deep water and that his clothes were in tatters, as if he had sailed through labyrinths of coral. They noticed too that he bore his death with pride, for he did not have the lonely look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of men who drowned in rivers. But only when they finished cleaning him off did they become aware of the kind of man he was and it left them

breathless. 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. They could not find a bed in the village large enough to lay him on nor was there a table solid enough to use for his wake. The tallest men's holiday pants would not fit him, nor the fattest ones' Sunday shirts, nor the shoes of the one with the biggest feet. Fascinated by his huge size and his beauty, the women then decided to make him some pants from a large piece of sail and a shirt from some bridal linen so that he could continue through his death with dignity. As they sewed, sitting in a circle and gazing at the corpse between stitches, it seemed to them that the wind had never been so steady nor the sea so restless as on that night and they supposed that the change had something to do with the dead man. 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. They thought that he would have had so much authority that he could have drawn fish out of the sea simply by calling their names and that he would have put so much work into his land that springs would have burst forth from among the rocks so that he would have been able to plant flowers on the cliffs. They secretly compared him to their own men, thinking that for all their lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest and most useless creatures on earth. They were wandering through that maze of fantasy when the oldest woman, who as the oldest had looked upon the drowned man with more compassion than passion, sighed: 'He has the face of someone called Esteban.' It was true. Most of them had only to take another look at him to see that he could not have any other name. The more stubborn among them, who were the youngest, still lived for a few hours with the illusion that when they put his clothes on and he lay among the flowers in patent leather shoes his name might be Lautaro. But it was a vain illusion. There had not been enough canvas, the poorly cut and worse sewn pants were too tight, and the hidden strength of his heart popped the buttons on his shirt. After midnight the whistling of the wind died down and the sea fell into its Wednesday drowsiness. The silence put an end to any last doubts: he was Esteban. The women who had dressed him, who had combed his hair, had cut his nails and shaved him were unable to hold back a shudder of pity when they had to resign themselves to his being dragged along the ground. It was then that they understood how unhappy he must have been with that huge body since it bothered him even after death. They could see him in life, condemned to going through doors sideways, cracking his head on crossbeams, remaining on his feet during visits, not knowing what to do with his soft, pink, sea lion hands while the lady of the house looked for her most resistant chair and begged him, frightened to death, sit here, Esteban, please, and he, leaning against the wall, smiling, don't bother, ma'am, I'm fine where I am, his heels raw and his back roasted from having done the same thing so many times whenever he paid a visit, don't bother, ma'am, I'm fine where I am, just to avoid the embarrassment of breaking up the chair, and never knowing perhaps that the ones who said don't go, Esteban, at least wait till the coffee's ready, were the ones who later on would whisper the big boob finally left, how nice, the handsome fool has gone. That was what the women were thinking beside the body a little before dawn. Later, when they covered his face with a handkerchief so that the light would not bother him, he looked so forever dead, so defenseless, so much like their men that the first furrows of tears opened in their hearts. It was one of the younger ones who began the weeping. The others, coming to, went from sighs to wails, and the more they sobbed the more they felt like weeping, because the drowned man was becoming all the more Esteban for them, and so

they wept so much, for he was the more destitute, most peaceful, and most obliging man on earth, poor Esteban. So when the men returned with the news that the drowned man was not from the neighboring villages either, the women felt an opening of jubilation in the midst of their tears. 'Praise the Lord,' they sighed, 'he's ours!' The men thought the fuss was only womanish frivolity. Fatigued because of the difficult night-time inquiries, all they wanted was to get rid of the bother of the newcomer once and for all before the sun grew strong on that arid, windless day. They improvised a litter with the remains of foremasts and gaffs, tying it together with rigging so that it would bear the weight of the body until they reached the cliffs. They wanted to tie the anchor from a cargo ship to him so that he would sink easily into the deepest waves, where fish are blind and divers die of nostalgia, and bad currents would not bring him back to shore, as had happened with other bodies. But the more they hurried, the more the women thought of ways to waste time. They walked about like startled hens, pecking with the sea charms on their breasts, some interfering on one side to put a scapular of the good wind on the drowned man, some on the other side to put a wrist compass on him , and after a great deal of get away from there, woman, stay out of the way, look, you almost made me fall on top of the dead man, the men began to feel mistrust in their livers and started grumbling about why so many main-altar decorations for a stranger, because no matter how many nails and holy-water jars he had on him, the sharks would chew him all the same, but the women kept piling on their junk relics, running back and forth, stumbling, while they released in sighs what they did not in tears, so that the men finally exploded with since when has there ever been such a fuss over a drifting corpse, a drowned nobody, a piece of cold Wednesday meat. One of the women, mortified by so much lack of care, then removed the handkerchief from the dead man's face and the men were left breathless too. He was Esteban. It was not necessary to repeat it for them to recognize him. If they had been told Sir Walter Raleigh, even they might have been impressed with his gringo accent, the macaw on his shoulder, his cannibal-killing blunderbuss, but there could be only one Esteban in the world and there he as, stretched out like a sperm whale, shoeless, wearing the pants of an undersized child, and with those stony nails that had to be cut with a knife. They only had to take the handkerchief off his face to see that he was ashamed, that it was not his fault that he was so big or so heavy or so handsome, and if he had known that this was going to happen, he would have looked for a more discreet place to drown in, seriously, I even would have tied the anchor off a galleon around my neck and staggered off a cliff like someone who doesn't like things in order not to be upsetting people now with this Wednesday dead body, as you people say, in order not to be bothering anyone with this filthy piece of cold meat that doesn't have anything to do with me. There was so much truth in his manner that even the most mistrustful men, the ones who felt the bitterness of endless nights at sea fearing that their women would tire of dreaming about them and begin to dream of drowned men, even they and others who were harder still shuddered in the marrow of their bones at Esteban's sincerity. That was how they came to hold the most splendid funeral they could ever conceive of for an abandoned drowned man. Some women who had gone to get flowers in the neighboring villages returned with other women who could not believe what they had been told, and those women went back for more flowers when they saw the dead man, and they brought more and more until there were so many flowers and so many people that it was hard to walk about. At the final moment it pained them to return him to the waters as an orphan and they chose a father and mother from among the best people, and aunts and uncles and cousins, so that through him all the inhabitants of the village became kinsmen. Some sailors who heard the weeping from a distance went off course and people heard of one who had himself tied to the main mast, remembering ancient fables about sirens. While they fought for the privilege of

carrying him on their shoulders along the steep escarpment by the cliffs, men and women became aware for the first time of the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they faced the splendor and beauty of their drowned man. They let him go without an anchor so that he could come back if he wished and whenever he wished, and they all held their breath for the fraction of centuries the body took to fall into the abyss. They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they would never be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory could go everywhere without bumping into beams and so that no one in the future would dare whisper the big boob finally died, too bad, the handsome fool has finally died, because they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban's memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs so that in future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas, and the captain would have to come down from the bridge in his dress uniform, with his astrolabe, his pole star, and his row of war medals and, pointing to the promontory of roses on the horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, over there, that's Esteban's village.

B. Summary of the Story The story begins with a group of children playing on the beach. They spot a "dark and slinky bulge" in the ocean. At first they think it's a ship, then a whale, and finally, when it washes up on shore, they realize it is a drowned man. The children do what we might expect children to do with a dead body: play with it. Finally, an adult spots the new toy and spreads word to the rest of the village. The men of the town carry the body to the nearest house and note how heavy it is. They suspect that maybe, since it floated around for so long, water got into his bones. The village in question is a small fishing community, twenty houses on a desert-like, flowerless cape bordered with cliffs to the ocean below. There is such little space that dead bodies are thrown over the cliffs and into the ocean, rather than buried. Because of the village's size, the men look around, see that none of them is missing, and easily know that the dead man is a stranger. That night, rather than going out to sea as usual, the men head to the neighboring towns to see if anyone is missing a large guy. The women stay behind to clean the body, which is covered in seaweed, stones, crab, and other sea paraphernalia. As they clean him off, the women notice that the junk he's covered in is foreign to their part of the world he comes from somewhere far away. This drowned man seems proud, too, unlike other drowned men they've seen in their time. When the drowned man is finally cleaned off, the women are left breathless: "not only [is] he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they [have] ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination". He's so big, in fact, that the women can't find a bed large enough for him. None of their husband's clothes will fit him. So the women, still fascinated by this amazing man, sew him some clothes from a sail. As they work, they feel as though their world has changed because of his arrival. If this man had

lived here, they surmise, his house would have been the biggest, his floor the strongest, his wife the happiest. "They secretly compare him to their own men, thinking that for all their lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest, and most useless creatures on earth". The oldest woman among them finally looks down at the drowned man and says that he has the face of someone called Esteban. All the women immediately agree. Though some of the younger women hope he is called Lautaro, they realize that no, he is definitely Esteban. After midnight, "the sea [falls] into its Wednesday drowsiness". As the women watch the body being dragged along the ground, they "shudder" with "pity." They realize that being so massive and manly must have been a burden to the drowned man. "They could see him in life, condemned to going through doors sideways, cracking his head on crossbeams", always a nuisance for the hostesses of houses he visited, who couldn't find a chair sturdy enough for him to sit on. He must have been embarrassed all the time at being a "big boob," a "handsome fool". When the men return and announce that none of the nearby villages can claim Esteban, the women rejoice that he is now theirs. The men think their women are being foolish. They're tired and want to get this burial done as quickly as possible. They tie together a sort of stretcher to carry him to the cliffs. They want to tie an anchor to his body so that he will sink to the deepest part of the water. But while the men hurry, the women try to waste time, adorning the body with more and more trinkets. The men grumble and complain until finally the women remove the handkerchief from the drowned man's face. Then the men, too, are in awe with how handsome he is, are left breathless, and see that he is "Esteban." They, too, believe that he would be ashamed of his big, burdensome body and the trouble he is causing the villagers. So the villagers hold a splendid, elaborate funeral for the drowned man. They go to neighboring villages to get flowers, and they choose for him honorary family members from their village, "so that through him all the inhabitants of the village become kinsmen . The women weep so loudly that sailors going by hear them and steer off course, and one man, thinking of the story of Odysseus, tie himself to the main mast. As they carry his body to the cliff, the women are aware for the first time of "the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams as they face the splendor and beauty of their drowned man". When they finally let the body go off the cliff, they do not anchor it, so that he can come back if he wishes. The villagers realize that from now on, everything will be different. They will make their houses bigger and stronger and better, and dig for springs in their courtyards, and paint their houses bright colors "to make Esteban's memory eternal", and plant flowers on their cliffs so that years from now, sailors going by will see the colors and smell the scents and know that there, on those cliffs, is Esteban's village. C. Elements of the Story 1. Setting A small fishing village somewhere in Latin America, a peasant community with 20 houses which spread out in a desert like cape.

2. Plot a. Initial Situation An ordinary seaside village This short story starts, as short stories should, with something significant happening. We're not in the initial situation for any length of time at the start of the narrative, but from later information about the village we can infer what the initial conditions looked like. In retrospect, we're introduced to a dry, bleak little village with no ambition to be anything other than a dry, bleak little village. b. Conflict The Drowned Man arrives. This is the "something significant" that launches the story. The drowned man's arrival brings any number of conflicts or questions with it: where did he come from? To whom does he belong? Who is he? What will his arrival mean for the village? c. Complication The Drowned Man is the handsomest, biggest, and strongest man in the world. This is no ordinary body. The various conflicts from the previous stage take on greater weight now that the drowned man is of such great importance. When the women decide that he is Esteban, the plotline is further complicated by the mythical implications of such a name. d. Climax The villagers give the Drowned Man a funeral. The final paragraph of "The Handsomest Drowned Man" is a climactic one. The body is returned to the sea, and as it falls the villagers realize that they will never be the same. In this moment they "realize the narrowness of their dreams" and resolve to do better, live larger, and make their village matter. The climax and conclusion of this story are both wrapped up together in the final paragraph. We don't really have a suspense or denouement stage. e. Conclusion The villagers now have a new vision of the future. The fantasy of the ship's captain announcing the village as Esteban's constitutes the conclusion of this story. The villagers have decided to be significant, to make their village matter, to distinguish themselves as being great, and create a village worthy of the drowned man. 3. Characters a. The dead man is the only individual character in the story. He is a catalyst figure. His stature and beauty have a transforming effect on the villagers. b. The women who arranged the burial of the drowned man and named him Esteban. c. The men.

4. Theme a. Theme of Admiration "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" explores what it means for a person to be great, and what effect such a person can have on those who admire him or her. Admiration can be directed outward, but at some point, the story teaches us, it turns inward, toward the self, and manifests as a desire for self-betterment. b. Theme of Transformation "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" explores the transformative effect of one dead man on an entire village. It argues that a truly great person has the power to change others, to inspire them to be better, to make them want to be extraordinary. It's interesting that, in this story, the villager's transformation originates entirely from within. The dead man is dead, after all, which means the villagers are responsible themselves and for the changes that they make. c. Theme of Men and Masculinity Masculinity is narrowly defined in "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World." Size, strength, and attractiveness are all synonymous with masculinity in this story. However, non-physical traits like compassion, humility, leadership, and modesty are also associated with the notion of what it means to be a man. The highest ideal of masculinity is shared and admired equally by both men and women in this story. d. Theme of Isolation "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" explores the ways in which human beings overcome personal isolation through their collective community. In this story, common beliefs in the mythic or fantastic bring together the members of a small fishing village. The men, women, and children of this community are united by their common desire for self-improvement. Together, they imagine a better future for themselves, a future in which they are as extraordinary as the myths in which they all believe. 5. Style The style of "The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World" is in itself fairly simple. Most of the sentence constructions are straightforward; most of the sentences are short. But it's also clear that the words are chosen carefully, and the sentences are constructed with specific intention. Consider the description of the drowned man's funeral. Mrquez writes that it took the body "a fraction of a century" to fall. Not three seconds, not a few moments a fraction of a century. Through these words we're reminded of the sense of timelessness of this village, of the mythological implications of the drowned man's arrival, and of the importance his presence holds for the village. It is also written chronologically. 6. Point of View Third Person (Limited Omniscient)

III.

Conclusion

The flowers cropped up noticeably at four different points in the story. First, the village is flowerless. Next, the women imagine that the drowned man would have planted flowers everywhere if he were alive. At the funeral, the village is filled with flowers the women brought from neighboring villages. And finally, there is the vision the locals have of their future, where their homes and courtyards are filled with flowers, springs, and bright colors. What this shows is that the villagers have been completely transformed by the arrival of the drowned man. Before he showed up, they were content. They didn't think about digging springs or planting flowers or painting their houses bright colors. They were an arid, desertlike village, and they were fine with being they way they were. The drowned man is, on his own, an extraordinary thing. That s because he's "the tallest, strongest, more virile, and best built" man they've ever seen (3). But that doesn't have anything to do with the ordinary village not, that is, until they claim him for their own. When the men return to announce that no one can claim the drowned man, the women exclaim: "Praise the Lord [ ]. He's ours" (7). This is why, at the funeral, the women weep when they look upon "the splendor and beauty of their drowned man" (12). He belongs to them. By belonging to the village, the extraordinary drowned man makes that village extraordinary. Or rather, he gives them the possibility of being extraordinary. He makes them look at their own lives in the light of his greatness. What they find when they look is "the desolation of their streets, the dryness of their courtyards, the narrowness of their dreams" (12). This new possibility of greatness takes root in the villagers. The story ended not with the funeral of the dead man, but with the rebirth of the village, it ended with a vision of the future: They did not need to look at one another to realize that they were no longer all present, that they would never be. But they also knew that everything would be different from then on, that their houses would have wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors so that Esteban's memory could go everywhere [ ], because they were going to paint their house fronts gay colors to make Esteban's memory eternal and they were going to break their backs digging for springs among the stones and planting flowers on the cliffs. (12) It's also worth taking a look at the final few sentences, where it is seen that it is indeed this sense of being worthy of Esteban that has so inspired the villagers: In future years at dawn the passengers on great liners would awaken, suffocated by the smell of gardens on the high seas, and the captain would have to come down [ ] and, pointing to the promontory of roses on the horizon, he would say in fourteen languages, look there, where the wind is so peaceful now that it's gone to sleep beneath the beds, over there, where the sun's so bright that the sunflowers don't know which way to turn, yes, that's Esteban's village. (12) This final paragraph is not something that actually happens in the text; it's what the villagers are imagining will happen some time in the future, this vision doesn't come from any one local in particular; Esteban unites the villagers, who now share this common vision for their common future. Together, they are going to make themselves extraordinary.

Republic of the Philippines UNIVERSITY OF NORTHERN PHILIPPINES Tamag, Heritage City of Vigan

Short Story Analysis:

The Handsomest Drowned Man

By

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

In Partial Fulfilment With the requirements In the subject Lit 103:

Literatures of the World

Submitted to: Mrs. Rhodora Tejero

Submitted by: Sheila Laoagan-de Vera

January 31, 2012