Summary Of The Most Handsome Drowned Man In The World

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There are a couple key aspects you should keep in mind when reading fiction to interpret the full meaning of the work. One of these aspects is the internal and external journeys that are present in most stories. An external journey is what a character does that can be observed and an internal journey is what a person thinks and feels that is difficult to notice just by looking at the person. Both of these elements occur in “The Most Handsome Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel García Marquez. The story is about a village that finds a dead man on its shore. The men of the village go to other villages to check if he is from anywhere nearby, while the women stay and care for him. The external journey is the women wash the mud from his hair and sew him new clothes. The internal journey is the women getting curious about the complete stranger and how badly they wish that the large man would come back from the dead. As they were cleaning him up, “they went on distracted by these labyrinths of fantasy” (Marquez 2) that he would come back to them. Usually, the external journey represents the internal journey, which directly influences the conclusion of the story. In this story, the women in the village grow so attached that others start going along with them. They cover him with flowers and rename their town to his name. What was supposed to be a simple funeral for a stranger turns into a grandiose ceremony. He opens their eyes that there are people larger than them, far away from