30 pages • 1 hour read
Gabriel García MárquezThe Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1968A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Drowned Man / Esteban
The drowned man, later named “Esteban” by the villagers, is the story’s titular character. The drowned man is described to be remarkably handsome, extremely tall, and very large in stature. He immediately catches the villagers’ attention and affection despite being covered in scales, slime, and other remnants of the ocean. He carries a weight about him that the villagers find curious and integrate into their impression of him. The drowned man has a mythos about him. His appearance affords him a higher degree of appreciation. He is viewed as superior in his physicality, relationships, and abilities. In response, the villagers plan him a lavish funeral and weep openly at the loss of their Esteban.
The name Esteban bears its own significance. “Esteban” is short for the name “Estevanico.” According to his myth, the original Estevanico was the first African man to step into Latin America. He was believed to be an enslaved person who went on to master countless languages and learn lifesaving medicinal skills. He was even considered to be a deity by some. The village’s Esteban is an allusion to the Spanish folk hero Estevanico and works to emphasize the greatness and otherworldliness of the drowned man to the villagers.
While the drowned man is not a traditional character with agency and appears more like an object, his character functions as the inciting incident for the villagers’ transformation. The drowned man acts a catalyst; he is what makes the villagers realize that they are unhappy with their lives and inspires them to make aesthetic changes. His very presence forces the villagers to come to terms with the bleakness of their own lives.
The Village Women
The majority of the story is told from the point of view of the village women. After the village men leave to ask the neighboring villages if they are missing any men, the women begin preparing the drowned man to be returned to the ocean in a water burial. It is during this time that the imagined characterization of the drowned man is supplied to the reader through the thoughts of the women caring for his body. The women are the first people in the village to create the mythological story surrounding the drowned man and set the precedent for his significance.
The women, once the men have returned and declared the man is not from any of the surrounding villages, simultaneously rejoice and cry. The women decide that Esteban is one of them. He instantly becomes a part of their village, and the village women are deeply saddened by his death and the loss of what could have been. Emboldened by the drowned man’s greatness, they vow to live up to their reputation as “Esteban’s village” and become a beautiful and happy community.
The Village Men
The village men look for someone to claim the drowned man who washed up on their shore. The men bring the first bit of conflict amongst the community, doubting and dismissing the women’s claims about the drowned man’s significance and greatness. They begin to feel jealous and even frustrated by the way the women treat the drowned man.
The men, through their interactions with the drowned man and their impressions of the women’s reactions, must face their own ideas of masculinity and what it means to be a great man. Initially, the men feel challenged by the village women’s depiction of the man, whom they named Esteban. However, once the men are shown the drowned man’s face, they easily accept the women’s narrative and embrace Esteban as their own. Rather than being enamored by the drowned man’s potential success, the men are sympathetic, contemplating the ways in which the drowned man’s handsome face and size must have caused him unbearable hardship. García Márquez uses the drowned man as a conduit for change, in this case, the subversion of masculinity and traditional gender roles.
Like the women, the men strive to become worthy of Esteban by the end of the story. Once the men accept the myth that the drowned man is Esteban, they create a community united by their shared beliefs. They promise to become worthy of Esteban and look forward to the changes that will occur in the future.
The Sailors
Although the sailors are only mentioned in one line of the story, their presence is still significant. After the villagers relinquish Esteban back to the sea, several ships turn off course. The sailors interpret the sounds of weeping as sirens, or mythological sea-nymphs. García Márquez includes this detail for two reasons: to reinforce the genre of magical realism, and to allude to another work of literature, Homer’s The Odyssey.
García Márquez grounds the narrative world of “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” in reality, and few aspects of the story are magical. However, the inclusion of the sirens helps to clarify the genre as magical realism. In Greek mythology, sirens are devious sea-nymphs who lure sailors to their deaths with enchanting song. In The Odyssey, Odysseus encounters sirens and, in an attempt to sail past the sirens without going off course, ties himself to the mast of his ship. In the story, distant sailors, upon hearing the villagers’ mourning cries for Esteban, believe they hear sirens and tie themselves to the mast like Odysseus. García Márquez incorporates sirens as an ordinary element of the narrative world. In doing so, the presence of the sirens supports the villagers’ mythological beliefs and help to make the fantastic sizing of Esteban more believable to the reader. The allusion to The Odyssey works to amplify the drowned man’s importance and depict his mythological qualities.
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By Gabriel García Márquez
