A review of the story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: A Tale for Children” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez with an emphasis on its ambiguity.
This paper examines the story “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World: A Tale for Children” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It looks at three passages in the story that have ambiguous meanings and discusses their importance to the story overall. It looks at how it is not really a story about the stranger who is washed up on shore, but a story about the women of a place who take matters into their own hands and change things for the better. It shows how each of the ambiguous passages is not really ambiguous at all but serves a distinct purpose in the story. They give dramatic details, they explain the actions of the characters and they help make the story more vital and alive. It evaluates how Marquez shows a wonderful understanding not only of people but of the use of language to create a marvelously unusual story.
“Again, the words here do not seem to mean anything, Marquez simply strings them together in a sentence whose meaning is vague at best. The man is so large he cannot fit in the women’s imagination. What does that mean? It is an interesting analogy, and becomes clearer as the story is reread. This man is so important to the women, for whatever reason, that his size is not really the issue any more. He is a large man, but even more important, he has filled up the heads of the women until he is the only important thing in their minds. Clearly, from this point on in the story, none of the other men in the village will be able to compete with this man, either physically or emotionally. He has something special the women have seen, and they love him for it.”