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Handsomest Drowned Man Imagery

Decent Essays

In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”, Gabriel Garcia Marquez uses powerful, visual imagery to create his world, but it is the olfactory, auditory, and tactile imagery that enables the reader to enter his world of magical realism. Marquez’s visual imagery begins with a dire description of a “dark and slinky bulge” that was possibly a “whale” (1). This clearly represents an ominous presence. However, it is the tactile and olfactory imagery that supports a more positive characterization. For example, the drowned man has “the smell of the sea” and is covered in a crust of “mud and scales” (1) “that the women finished cleaning him of... it left them breathless” (1). Later, Marquez describes the humble village by detailing the visual imagery. This setting has “twenty-odd wooden houses that had stone courtyards,” (1). …show more content…

After the women clean the man and name him Esteban, they “covered his face with a handkerchief”, causing him to look “so forever dead, so defenseless,” and he begins to look like their men. This visual imagery creates a depressing mood, but the mood is solidified by the auditory imagery following it. The women “went from sighs to wails, and the more they sobbed the more they felt like weeping” (2). Eventually, the villagers let the drowned man free from the village. In order to keep Esteban’s memory alive, the villagers imagine having “wider doors, higher ceilings, and stronger floors,” and they would “paint their house fronts gay colors,” (3). The village is now “so bright that the sunflowers don’t know which way to turn,”

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