The Handsomest Man on Earth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

1. The Handsomest Man on Earth by Gabriel Garcia Marquez Rachel Choi SeungwooEun Boram Lee Daniel Lee

2. Basic Background • Setting • A village by the sea • Complex Setting: • No exact location and specific time frame • Mythical place, far from the civilized land • Main Characters • The Giant Man named Esteban • Village People • Tone: • Worshipful and Naïve

3. Summary • The story begins when the children of a village find a body of man. At first, children play with the body, and later when people find them playing, people bring his heavy body that can barely fit in their house. • Since village people cannot find his relates, they decide to clean his body and realize that he is really tall and handsome. Because nothing in the village fit him, women make tools and clothes for him. Through this process, they become amazed by him and name him Esteban. • On the other hand, men in the village are humiliated because their wives compare them with Esteban and finally compromise to send him. After he is gone, women begin to miss him and later decide to memorize him by building bigger houses so that whenever he comes back he can feel home. They put flowers on the cliffs so that in future visitors can remember him and soon name their village, “Esteban’s village.”

4. Important Theme • Beauty • Perception of the beauty according to his looks after the women clean them. Children think of the drowned man nothing but a figure until the women in the village cleans him. The drowned man turns out to show strength and beauty. The village people start to recognize the beauty of the drowned man and compare with the dryness of their lives. The drowned man gives the village people imagination of new beauty and aesthetic that they never had before. • “Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination.”

5. Important Theme 2 • Hero & Role Model • The women in the village depict the drowned man as a hero who is able to work efficiently. The imagination of the heroic figure brings village people the idea of what this drowned man could have done. • Through their imagination Esteban is first admirable, then lovable, and finally cherished by all. He becomes representative of the whole village, and at his funeral they choose relatives for him in such a way • “They thought that he would have so much authority that he could have drawn fish out of the sea simply by calling their names and that he would put so much work into his land that springs would have burst forth from among the rocks so that he would have been able to plant flowers on the cliff” (914).

6. Questions? • 1. What did you think about Esteban when he first appeared in the story? • Strange, uncertain, mysterious • What do you think about human need for dreams and heroes? • Human tend to look for heroes because they can motivate by them.