Esteban And Religion (Most Handsomest Drowned Man In The World)
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Esteban and Religion
The story of The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World starts with a corpse washing up on shore of a small island village. Eventually villagers find the big bulky body of the corpse and take it on up to the village. While the men go and search nearby villages to ask if they are missing anyone, the women take over and begin to obsess about the corpse and even decide to give him a name, Esteban. This made the corpse more personal then it ever should be. They start to think that the corpse could have had a good life and just keep obsessing over it. Eventually its not only the women that are obsessed over the corpse but now the men begin to treat it God-like. In a story like this, thats not concrete and is supposed to make you think, one has to make an assumption of what the story is trying to say and/or what you are you interoperating it to say. I had to read this story a number of times to try to understand what it is trying to tell me, and finally I began to understand and make my assumption of the story. I suspect the story was trying to relate religion and Esteban together. It is a hard idea to understand and a little out there but then I started to think about ways religion is related to Esteban. For example, how was the difficulty the villagers had dealt with Estebans body related to religion also being a burden? How the positive and negative thoughts of Esteban life relate to thinking of salvation and damnation that you see in religion? Finally I want to explore the relationship between how religion changes us, and how Esteban left the village before he was thrown back into the ocean and properly buried.
In the story the Handsomest Man, the corpse, Esteban is found and then is then is taken to the village and that where the first problem starts. Esteban is way too big to get in most of the houses, and when he squeezes into a house, but they cant even get clothes to change him into. His clothes are tattered and they want to give him a respectable funeral so they have to make him new pants and shirt. For the villagers his is a hassle and is in a sense a burden to take care of this dead body. Now you many not see this type of comparison but as the villagers have their hands full with Esteban big body, people have a problem with being a religious person. Religion is a big burden to take up. If you want to do it right, like you should do all things in life like you have to do it 100%. And that is very hard to do this with so much temptation in the world; its just very had to say clean spiritually and go to church.
In the story, when the women were thinking of what kind of life Esteban had with maybe having a family, maybe a wife, they are very excited because Esteban is something new and everyone gets excited when they get something new. Esteban was new and made them day dream about what he was like, was he a great lover, etc. the point is that them thinking about the good in Esteban relates to people thinking of their salvation if