Short Stories 2

For my Spanish literary analysis class, I had to read a novel by Gabriel García Márquez as well as a short story by Borges. Having read other work by Márquez, the consistency in his voice is very apparent. Márquez wrote during the Magic Realism era causing much of his work to have this presence of fantasy and the surreal. The entirety of “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World” revolves around this idea of surrealism. Bringing a dead body home, cleaning it up, and then celebrating it isn’t generally on the daily agenda for most people. Márquez, however, has the ability to take a completely unfathomable idea and connect these very believable emotions to it. Borges also wrote during the time of the Latin American “boom”. His short story “El Etnógrafo” shares a similar style to that of “Pierre Menard”. They are set up in this sort of journalistic report. Seeing how all four international authors had a distinct voice while still holding a connecting style showed how the manner of writing seems to stay fairly constant during a time period across all borders.