After reading “The Most Handsome Drowned Man” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’ve concluded that there are many similarities in how the villagers encounter the most handsome drowned man and how we students are encountering this story. The reading shows us the state of the villager’s pre and post-meeting of the drowned man and how they interpret and react to the new experience. By having this as the first story of the course, it forces us into a similar situation in which we reflect on the nature of the story and what our reactions are to it.
In the story, the author makes a point of having both the villagers and the body have no identity. We are not given the name of the village nor is the body someone the villagers know. Through interacting with it, the villagers name it Estaban. Pre-Estaban we find the villagers as just some nameless village, lacking any distinctness to call their own. Afterward, the villagers decide to change their village to be as welcoming to Estaban as possible, enlarging doors, heightening roofs, and strengthening floors. Their whole village becomes devoted to Estaban and it gains the identity of Estaban’s village.
We, students, are in a similar situation where before we start this assignment we are just names on a roster. After the story, we create an identity based on what we post on the discussion board and we decide how to react to this story and how this helps us grow as students.
In conclusion, I think the reason why this was chosen as the first story for this class is because of the similarities of the story and our situation as students and what conclusions we draw from it.
