I think The Handsomest Drowned Man by Gabriel García Márquez was assigned as the first reading of the semester to serve as an encouragement for the participants of the course to tap into, explore and express our imagination.
The short story introduces a realm where the environment and the people are realistic, except for Esteban’s character. By bringing a small piece of wonder into a world of normalcy, García Márquez prompts his readers to have an open mind for the occurrence of such miracles and to look for them in their lives and, perhaps, even their minds. Therefore, I believe that the objective of this assignment was to let us feel safe in freely expressing our truth in our writing during this course, even if it leads to the establishment of a world that might seem odd at first. I am looking forward to seeing what everyone’s imagination has in store for us.
4 thoughts on “Viktoria Borosan Discussion 2”
good morning, Viktoria, I wasn’t expecting that the drowned man could enrich the life of the villagers because it was a dead man. In my point of view, I think that a dead man could change a village even a country if it was a leader of a movement. For example, Martin Luther King. However, the dead man enriched their lives by giving them a more magical view of reality. For me the moral of this story, whatever isn’t good for someone can be good for someone else to bring a change or a transformation.
Viktoria, thanks for the thoughtful comments. I do think this story has a lot to say about opening our minds and imagination. It is imagination that allows the villagers to create a life story for the dead man about whom they really know nothing. Once they have created this wonderful story, they enlarge their own lives and try to live up to the story they have created for the dead man. In this way, the village gives life to the dead man, and the dead man gives life to the village.
Hello Viktoria,
I also think this story is like an imagination and probably we might have other stories to be imagination.
I very much agree with you, that this short story makes you think a lot about this story, in a way that interests the reader and lets the reader imagine the main character Esteban and the villages. Also, the writer really went deep for details and visuals to catch our attention to finishing the story.