Esteban

Esteban

            “The Handsomest Drowned Man In The World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a very interesting story. The story is about a drowned man named Esteban whose body is found by some children. The women and the men have very different perspectives about the drowned in the beginning.

            The women envied him. After the women cleaned him off in paragraph 4, the women grew breathless when they saw the kind of man he was. The women in the village noticed all of his good features. Paragraph 4 addressed that he was the tallest strongest, most masculine man they have ever seen. The women thought if Esteban lived in their village his house must had the widest doors and his wife must been the happiest woman.

The men of the village viewed the situation as a drowned stranger. In paragraph 7, the men started feeling mistrusted and started murmuring about why the stranger had so many decorations. The men saw the man as just another dead body. In paragraph 7, the men said, “No matter how many nails and holy-water jars he had on him, the sharks would chew him all the same.” The men also thought of the dead body as “A piece of cold Wednesday meat.”

            In conclusion, the women and the men of the small village had different perspectives about the drowned man. In the end of the story the men and the women benefitted from the situation. They wanted to keep the memories of Esteban eternal, so they painted their house fronts gay colors. They also built higher ceilings, wider doors, and stronger floors.          Esteban’s drowned body symbolized beauty that the villagers had not experienced before.