In a numb world, devoid of much refreshment, a happy moment can unite people in a bond of cohesion and rejuvenate the world. “The Most Beautiful Drowned Man in the World” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez masterfully weaves this idea together. He does not use grandiose predictive statements that take the reader directly to the message, but a beautiful poetic subtlety and tone. Marquez encourages the reader to accompany him on the simplest paths and offers him a world that is alternately divine and real. When the destination is reached, it is the seeds sown in Marquez's restraint that blossom into multifaceted nuances. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It would be difficult to discuss the story without using Marquez's words because it is his words that evoke the magic that is the story. “Marquez is famous for his ability to . . . bringing the dead back to life and making even the cruelest fates a matter of course – all with the greatest fluidity and credibility” (Delbanco and Cheuse 538). Marquez depicts death as a visual aspect of the plot, characterized by the drowned body of a stranger arriving on the shores of a small coastal village. When “Wednesday’s corpse” “washes up on the beach,” the main character is first revealed to the village children (Marquez 540, 538). Once the children have removed the “seaweed” body mask. . . fish and wrecks,” they realize that their curiosity is a dead man (Marquez 538). Marquez's portrayal of the deceased character is both mystifying and innocent; compared to the questioning, unpretentious goodness of young children. The children are therefore not afraid and accept the dead man into their fold and spend the afternoon with their harmless friend, “burying him in the sand and digging him up again”. Marquez's use of irony and symbolism is important to the character's introduction of both the body and death. The stranded dead man should be a gruesome sight, but Marquez paints the stranger in such a way that children feel a natural inclination to be with him and involve him in their games. This treatment allows the reader to accept death through the body without apprehension. When a member of the village comes across children playing with the deceased, the individual alerts the members of the village. The men who carry the body “to the nearest house” in the village notice its extraordinary weight and compare its mass to “a horse” (Marquez 538). Marquez nourishes the ironic and symbolic connotations of his description of the austere setting of the village: “Only twenty wooden houses with stone courtyards and no flowers. . . which were distributed at the end of a desert cape. You might think that the village is reminiscent of a lush tropical coastal area. However, Marquez challenges this notion, describing the landscape as desolate and gently hinting at the story's conclusion. Marquez reinforces the magical nature of the body's presence when presented to the men and women of the simple village. To account for the particularities of the body, ideas swell in the collective psyche of the village, seeking reasons to explain the iconic proportions of the corpse to their own. The men set out to search nearby villages “to see if any of them will claim the dead stranger” (Wilson 80). While the women methodically clean the corpse with great care, allowing them to connect with the stranger on a deeper level (Wilson 80). Symbolically, women carefully remove the layers of debris from the man in relation to their own lives. It was at this point that Marquezalludes to the corpse as a hero and foreshadows the “drowned man” as an impending epiphany. Today, Marquez's style of magical realism is in full force. “The power of magical realism comes from the way it blends the fantastical and the everyday by depicting incredible events, supporting them with realistic details, and telling everything in a down-to-earth tone” (Korb 87). When the women finish cleaning the body, they “see what a great man he is.” He is the most supreme example. . .” (Wilson 80). With women's reactions, Marquez introduces the idea that intensive cleansing and self-examination can trigger miraculous results. It reiterates and reinforces this feeling as the women imagine a world where renewed man “could bring fish out of the sea and make flowers grow on the dry cliffs” (Wilson 81). The grandiose stranger has now acquired divine and potential savior qualities and the women call him Esteban. However, “their own men [who are not purified and renewed]…. . . suddenly appear as the weakest, meanest, most useless people” (Wilson 81). Esteban's deification rejuvenates women, creating a positive change in the way women think about their world. Before Esteban “there was no room for [such greatness] in their imagination” (Wilson 81). When the tired men of the village return at dawn to say that there is no one to claim the stranger, the women rejoice: “He is ours!” (Marquéz 539). After spending the whole night on an odyssey to neighboring villages, the men are tired. They want to hoist the heavy stranger up the cliff, anchor him and throw him into the sea before the day gets too hot. But the women want to extend the grace of Esteban's presence to prepare his body with elaborate symbols and ornaments for the journey into the afterlife. Eventually, the men get tired of the women's indulgence with Esteban. Marquez cleverly introduces the conflict between the now envious, woman-loving men and their hero, Esteban. Frustrated men “explode.” . . since when has there been such a fuss about a drifting corpse, a drowned person, a piece of Wednesday cold meat.” The women are pained to see their divine Esteban so poorly represented by their men. Women want and need men to share their vision of Esteban. A woman then removes the handkerchief from Esteban's face “and the men are left breathless” (Marquez 540). From now on, the veil is lifted, intrinsically uniting men and women; the entire village to the promise of Esteban's grace. Marquez now multiplies the universal effect of Esteban's life sentence. The women go to neighboring villages to pick flowers and spread the miracle of Esteban's favor. When the women tell Esteban's story to neighboring villages, it creates a chain reaction drawing more flowers and more worshipers to the Cape "until there are so many flowers and so many people that there are was difficult to walk there” (540). Márquez has now united the entire world of villagers by participating in Esteban's farewell communion. Marquez makes the reader understand that a metamorphosis is taking place. All the villagers are united in their desire to maintain a deep and lasting bond with Esteban. They choose a family line, a line for Esteban “among the best”. . . so that, thanks to him, all the inhabitants of the village become parents.” When the time comes for Esteban to return to the sea, he is not chained by anchors. He is free to return to the villagers as he pleases. With Esteban's departure, the villagers of Cape Town understand how 2010.