Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Transformation, Myth, and Connection
Fantasy and Reality
Kinship
Summary
Analysis
The children of a coastal village find a large, drowned body on the beach. The body is encrusted with detritus from the sea. The children play with the drowned man in the sand for an afternoon before someone notices the body and alerts the rest of the village. The men of the village who carry the drowned man to the nearest house say that he is much heavier and taller than any man they’ve known. They speculate that his great size might have something to do with his extended exposure to the sea, that he might have absorbed water into his body.
The story establishes in its first lines that the fantastic will coexist with mundane, real things—the children play with the gigantic body as though it is a normal item, and they actually initially mistake the body for something ordinary from the sea when they first find it. The men casually rationalize the body’s extraordinary features, creating an explanation—that the man is so large because his body has absorbed water—that’s not all that likely, but which they provisionally accept as a group to avoid challenging their preconceptions about the world.
Themes
The village has very little land. Because of this, the villagers must throw the bodies of the dead off a cliff into the sea. The village is also so small that they know the dead man must be a stranger, since it is easy to see that everyone from the village is present. The village men leave to see if any of the neighboring villages are missing a man, while the women stay behind with the intent of cleaning the drowned man. They remove the mud, scales, and various plants that obscure his features. The unfamiliar plants covering his body suggest he comes from a very distant place. Once the man is cleaned off, the women realize that he is exceptionally handsome—he appears to be taller, stronger, more virile, and better built than any man they’ve ever seen.
The villagers clearly respect the relationship that neighboring groups may have with the drowned man. Even though he is a stranger to whom they don’t owe anything personally, the village men decide to locate his kinsmen so they can have closure about the man’s death. The villagers also decide to clean his body, presumably also for the sake of anyone who may be related to him. While the women clean him, an additional fantastical element is introduced— the women recognize that the man is extremely handsome, and even his dead body allows them to imagine a better, more exciting life.
Themes
The women decide to make the drowned man clothes using spare fabric, as no article of clothing that the village men have is sufficiently large for him. While they sew through the night, the sea is unprecedentedly restless and the wind is unnaturally calm. The women, meanwhile, imagine the man when he was alive: they think he must have been a magnificent, towering figure of great authority who draws fish out of the water by calling their name. They start to think less of their own men in comparison, imagining the handsome, drowned man as someone far more capable.
The women make sense of their magical experience by supplementing it with fantastical backstory. During this episode, they compare the mythical exploits of the drowned man to their own men’s actions as though his imagined backstory were real, suggesting that they temporarily view it as completely true. The wide agreement among the women that their invented stories about the man are true appears to be facilitated by the women having jointly created the stories. Everyone is contributing, and nobody disagrees.
Themes
They are pulled out of their web of fantasies only when the oldest woman says, with compassion, “He has the face of someone named Esteban.” Most of the women immediately see that this must be true. A few of them attempt to deny it and speculate that he has some other name, but even they eventually agree.
The women quickly part with their first view of the drowned man when someone provides a new view that seems plausible. The old woman’s view comes to be accepted over the previous, even though the two are similarly speculative, by virtue of the group consensus shifting.
Themes
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The women did not have enough fabric, so the clothes they’ve made for Esteban are too small, and the buttons have popped off of his shirt. The women realize that Esteban must’ve been inconvenienced by his huge body in life, just as he is being disadvantaged by it even in death. They imagine him having to awkwardly but endearingly deal with places that are ill equipped to handle someone of his stature, and people who mock his size behind his back. Moved by their imaginations, the women begin to weep for him.
The women elaborate on their alternate view of the drowned man in much the same way they did previously; however, in this instance, his features, stature, and circumstance after death are interpreted as meaning that he's an obliging, humble man. The backstory the women create is so intensely believed by the village women that they weep for him and his misfortunes. The village women appear to believe that it is completely and indubitably true.
Themes
The men return from their nighttime trips to other nearby villages with the news that the drowned man does not belong to any neighboring village. The women are relieved, as this means Esteban is now theirs. The men of the village plan a makeshift sea burial for the drowned man, but the women delay it by adding more and more charms and decorations to his body. Soon the men become distrustful of the women and their feelings for the drowned men, as they can’t understand why the women care so much about a drifting corpse. In response, offended by the men’s lack of care, a woman removes the handkerchief covering Esteban’s face.
Having bonded with the drowned man, the village women are deeply relieved that they can claim the man as their kin. The women are compelled both by their sympathy and new relation to the man to thoroughly decorate his body and funeral litter. The men have not shared the women’s experience of the drowned man and, furthermore, have not yet recognized him as their own, so their perspective is, at first, at odds with the aims of the village women.
Themes
The men are immediately struck by Esteban’s beauty and by the obliging, humble nature suggested by his features. Moved by his appearance, the men cease to distrust the women and their intentions. Instead, the men join with the women and hold the most splendid funeral they can for Esteban. Residents from other villages stream in to attend, and the villagers choose a family for Esteban so that he will not be put to rest as an orphan. As they bring him to the water to lay him to rest in the depths of the sea, the villagers recognize the desolate and dry quality of their village for the first time.
The men are struck by the appearance of the drowned man in much the same way that the women were. They consequently come to believe the same things of his character and backstory—that he is a humble man and was troubled by his body in life. The shared beliefs and experience of the villagers compel them to act and think single-mindedly for the first time in the story; as a group, they hold a spectacular, moving funeral for the man who is now their kin, and recognize the sterility of their village. The experience has connected the villagers to each other and transformed their perspective.
Themes
After the funeral, the villagers know that something has changed in them. They aim to capture Esteban’s memory in their village by making wider, larger houses so his spirit could move easily through the village. They will honor him by painting their houses in bright colors and by planting great flowerbeds along the cliffs. They imagine a future time when a great passenger liner approaches their promontory and a captain points to their floral village as a landmark. The captain, in their vision, points and explains in many languages that this peaceful, beautiful place is Esteban’s village.
While the villagers clearly aim to improve the village for their own sake, so that it may become a vibrant community for themselves and their progeny, they also aim to improve it for the sake of their kinsman, Esteban. They want their village to suit and represent the splendor of the drowned man. Sharing the experience of the drowned man’s visit has profoundly shifted the villagers’ perspective and deeply endeared them to each other; in the story’s final lines, the villagers plan to realize a future that they collectively and vividly imagine. The transformation has, in this sense, enabled the villagers to cohesively strive towards a goal of self-rejuvenation.
Themes
