The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World

“They noticed too that he bore his death with pride, for he did not have the lonely look of other drowned men who came out of the sea or that haggard, needy look of men who drowned in rivers.”

The narrator uses hyperbole, or an extreme exaggeration, to emphasize the drowned man’s uniqueness. It is impossible that he “bore his death with pride,” but the metaphor evokes an image of the drowned man as someone put-together and strong even in death. This image is juxtaposed with the narrator’s understatement of the drowned man’s first appearance, in which he is covered in “fish and flotsam.”

“Not only was he the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen, but even though they were looking at him there was no room for him in their imagination.”

The village women set the drowned man apart from their village men in another example of hyperbole. The villagers’ perception of the drowned man elevates him to the status of a fantastical being. The phrase “no room for him in their imagination” is ironic and foreshadows the role imagination will play in the creation of Esteban. Additionally, the narrative uses hyperbole to thematically develop The Way Imagination Shapes Reality.

“They thought that if that magnificent man had lived in the village, his house would have had the widest doors, the highest ceiling, and the strongest floor, his bedstead would have been made from a midship frame held together by iron bolts, and his wife would have been the happiest woman. They thought that he would have had so much authority that he could have drawn fish out of the sea simply by calling their names and that he would have put so much work into his land that springs would have burst forth from among the rocks so that he would have been able to plant flowers on the cliffs. They secretly compared him to their own men, thinking that for all their lives theirs were incapable of doing what he could do in one night, and they ended up dismissing them deep in their hearts as the weakest, meanest and most useless creatures on earth.”

This over-the-top imaginative description of the drowned man is another example of hyperbole. The village women believe that the drowned man is so masculine that if he lived in their village, his bed would be built from a ship and require iron bolts to keep it secure.