In “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” García Márquez explores the theme of beauty and how it relates to value through the drowned man, Esteban. Beauty is a multifaceted because it encompasses both physical and emotional traits. The drowned man is originally depicted as any other bloated, floating corpse, “covered with a crust of mud and scales” (Paragraph 2). However, the villagers begin to project their own standards of beauty and masculinity onto the drowned man. As the women clean him, they begin to see him in a different way, remarking that he was “the tallest, strongest, most virile, and best built man they had ever seen” (Paragraph 4). Soon, they begin to imbue him with qualities that go beyond physical, crafting an entire narrative for the drowned man. They state that he would have the “strongest floor,” “highest ceiling,” and “happiest” wife (Paragraph 5), providing him with only the best qualities to go alongside his physical beauty.

This shift from purely physical admiration into emotion reveals a deeper truth and suggests that our understanding of beauty is shaped by our culture and society. Aesthetics are subjective and require comparisons to other things that may be perceived as universally beautiful to validate its own beauty.