The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World is a short story written by Gabriel Marquez. It is a story about a man who washes up on a beach in a village and is discovered by the villagers. He is taken into the village and “they took the mud off with grass swabs, they removed the underwater stones entangled in his hair…” They treat him like he is one of their own and they love and care for him even though he is not your average, everyday man. It shouldn’t matter what you look like you should always be treated like everyone else.
This short story is pretty much the contrary of Frankenstein. In the story of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, the creature known as Frankenstein is just like Esteban in The Most Handsomest Drowned Man in the World but he is treated completely differently. He is the “eight-foot-tall, hideously ugly creation of Victor Frankenstein” and everyone in the village hates him and treats him as though he is dangerous and harmful. For Esteban though, “the women then decided to make him some pants from a large piece of sail and a shirt from some bridal linen” he was treated with tenderness and care by the villagers. Poor Frankenstein, it isn’t right how the people treat you with hate and less love than others.
What should have happened in Frankenstein is that the villagers should have taken the time to realize that Frankenstein was not a monster. So many people judge others by what they look like or wear rather than what their personality is. For example, in The Most Handsomest Drowned Man in the World “They (the women) secretly compared him (Esteban) 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.” The women started to think of their men like the villagers in Frankenstein thought of the character Frankenstein. In the end the moral of the story should be that no matter what one looks like, we are all EQUAL.
