Paper One: Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World”
Assignment Summary: Marquez’s story comments on how imagination and empathy can play a vital role in social transformation. In this paper you will explore how Marquez’s story sets up three different reactions to the corpse: the children, the men, and the women. Your paper will examine these three different reactions but should focus on how the reaction of the women ultimately brings about change.
Paper Structure: The first paragraph should include author’s name, name of the story, and a very brief synopsis of the story in which only the main points are covered. Your summary should be no more than four or five sentences long. In the last sentence of the first paragraph please include a thesis statement that makes a claim related to imagination and empathy playing a role in social transformation.
In subsequent paragraphs you should use short quotations from the story as textual evidence to support your thesis. None of your body paragraphs should contain any summarizing or retelling of the story. Instead, provide concisely quoted details and an explicit explanation of how these details support your thesis statement. Try to begin these body paragraphs with clear and focused topic sentences that make a claim related to your thesis. If you begin a body paragraph with a non-debatable fact from the story, it sets you up to summarize. If you begin a body paragraph with a focused claim connected to your thesis it will provide guardrails for you and keep you focused.
Include a short conclusion that reminds us of why what you’ve shared matters. Can you think of any reasons why the story still has relevance to our lives fifty years after it was first published? If not that’s fine, just remind us of the main idea of the story. I don’t expect your conclusion to be more than three to four sentences.