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The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World (Marquez) 10301 Views


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Description:

A dead man floats to shore. Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke or a horror movie, but wait: it gets weirder. He's super tall, super good-looking, and all the local villagers get hearts in their eyes at the mere thought of him. He's still dead, though, so where does the story go from here?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, a la Shmoop: Where’s Baywatch when you need

00:08

them? We spend much of our lives trying to accumulate…

00:12

the biggest.

00:13

The biggest TV, the biggest house, the biggest swimming pool…

00:17

…about the only things we want smaller are our electronic devices.

00:22

We’re still waiting for the iPad microchip that gets implanted in our brains. That’ll

00:27

be sweet. But… why our obsession? Why does size…

00:32

ahem… matter? In The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,

00:37

the residents of the fishing village are impressed by the dead man’s beauty…

00:40

…but they are equally blown away by his incredible stature.

00:47

They admire his size and are inspired by it…

00:51

…they even vow to start building their houses bigger, so as to be worthy of the stranger.

00:57

Because clearly this Estaban fellow would have been a huge fan of “open concept.”

01:03

We certainly embrace this same sort of idea in our own culture, but why?

01:08

Is it simply because things and people of imposing size inspire awe?

01:15

The Grand Canyon wouldn’t attract quite so many tourists if it was a foot deep.

01:20

You probably can’t name many shorter mountains, but Everest and K2 sure get a lot of our attention.

01:27

When we see something bigger than ourselves, perhaps we’re reminded of how small and

01:31

insignificant we are in this vast universe…

01:34

…and we put it up on a pedestal.

01:36

It’s certainly true of the villagers in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ story.

01:40

Although… the guy was a little heavy, so it was a bit easier just to float him back

01:44

out to sea than to put him anywhere. Or are we obsessed with size because we wish

01:51

we were bigger ourselves? Human beings are capable of great feats, but

01:56

we can’t make ourselves much bigger than we are.

01:58

Not without some serious pizza consumption. Showing admiration for those things that exhibit

02:04

more mass than we do may be our way of emulating what we want to be…

02:09

…larger than life. Of course, there’s a third possibility.

02:13

Maybe we’re… um… compensating for something smaller?

02:16

We all have our… shortcomings…

02:20

…could our reverence for the big and tall be an effort to bury our insecurities about

02:26

the things in our lives that makes us feel small, weak or vulnerable?

02:31

Those villagers, for example, didn’t seem to be exuding confidence.

02:34

One oversized dead guy washes up on their shore and all of a sudden they’ve got a

02:39

new hero.

02:40

Perhaps Estaban was a distraction for them from their own anxiety and self-doubt…

02:50

What do you think?

02:51

Are we inspired by the grandeur of the big and mighty?

02:53

Is size a symbol of something we wish we could be ourselves?

02:57

Or is it a distraction from our… smaller aspects?

03:01

Shmoop amongst yourselves.

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