ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

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

Share It!

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?

Author:

Author / Márquez - Gabriel García Márquez

Language:

English Language

Subjects:

Tags:

Common Core Standards:

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.
Full Transcript