¶ … Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Point-of-View -- the author presents the perceptions of the villagers who live in isolation and are suddenly shaken by the arrival of someone so unlike them in stature and appearance. First, the women, then the men, construct an ideal from the tallness and overall attractiveness of the drowned man. He represents a myth, which mingles with their collective sense of reality and is moved by it. Even when they decide to throw him back into the sea as their burial tradition, they design their future according to the image of this admirable drowned man so that they too may one day be admired by others.
Genre -- Magical realism fuses magic and reality. The reality part is the everyday and routine ways of the villagers in the isolated island. The magic is the sudden arrival of the dead body of this magnificent man so unlike them or their wildest dreams. He simply does not occur to them and they do not know how to classify him. Nevertheless, the villagers decide to live with the impact of this strange and new experience. It opens up to them an entirely new perception of their future. Instead of feeling threatened by the newness o the experience, they accept what he symbolizes and then collectively decide to frame their future according to his unique qualities.
Imagery -- This is basically one of the sea where the village men fish the drowned man out of. The children who first find the dead body assume that Esteban is a ship and then a...
After the women clean his up, they smell the sea from him. Only his tallness indicates that this is the corpse of a person. They dress him up and imagine him to be an authoritative being capable of drawing fish from the sea "by simply calling them by name." Overall, the villagers perceive the magnificent-looking drowned man as belonging to the sea and restores him to it as their way of burying him.
Araby by James Joyce
Atmosphere -- this presents as a journey or a pursuit of something precious for someone precious but which is frustrated by the delay of the boy's uncle, the near-closing of the bazaar, and the lack of items to buy, which suits his budget. Part of the atmosphere in this fiction is the exotic bazaar and the boy's need to impress the girl with something unique. His friend Mangan's sister is also believed to be Ireland itself. The boy is an explorer seeking to acquire her for his country.
Epiphany -- the boy comes to terms with the limits to gratifying his desire to impress the beloved girl. He is subject to his uncle whose arrival conditions that gratification. He impatiently waits for him and almost gives up. When the uncle finally arrives, he speeds to Araby to buy the gift for the girl. But the bazaar is closing and the suitable items have run out. Only costly ones have remained in these late hours. His frustration mounts and finally topples him. At this point, he snaps out of the obsession and realizes the futility of the pursuit. The sudden…
