Post on 26-Feb-2023
A Stylistic Comparison of Two Short
Stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
“The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship”
and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in
the World”
Stylistics Course
Supervised by
Assist. Prof. Dr. Behbud Muhammedzade
Prepared by:
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Osama Mirkhan Nabi
November 27, 2014 1. Introduction
The main intention of this paper is to give a brief
identification to stylistics and, apply some its tool on
exploring and examining Gabriel Garcia’s way of using
language in his fictions; however, mainly to investigate his
style of writing in his both short stories: “The Last Voyage
of The Ghost Ship” and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the
World. ”
The decision of choosing particularly these two short
stories has been made upon two reasons. First of all, these
two stories have been written By Garcia before obtaining a
worldwide recognition and fame after publishing his famous
novel “ One Hundred Years of Solitude” (1967) (Eng. Tran.
1970), both short stories were written between (1955) to
(19168) but then have been published in a collection called
“Leaf Storm and Other stories in (1972). Thus, it is a good
opportunity to investigate his style of writing before being
famous by his masterpiece. Secondly, both short stories in
terms of word numbers have a slight difference as each of
them consists of (2100-2300) words, and this gives a good
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opportunity to attain more accurate outcomes for the
stylistic analysis.
The significance of this work is due to my admiration for
Garcia’s works, which obtained a global recognition, as they
stand for the whole humanity and put many philosophical
ideas and visions that have in written form of language in a
highly decorated and comprehensible way.
2. Garcia: His Life, Style, and Works
Gabriel Garcia Marquez is considered the Colombia’s foremost
writer by many critics and the speech of Colombia’s
president Juan Manuel Santos affirms “the greatest Colombian
who ever lived.”1 Garcia was born on 6 March 1928 in the
town of Aracataca, Colombia and was raised by his
grandparents until the age of eight. His grandfather whom1 Vulliamy,Ed. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Greatest Colombian Who Ever Lived.” The Guardian.com. www.theguardian.com. 19 Apr. 2014 Web. 1. Dec. 2014. < http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/19/gabrielgarciamarquez-colombia>
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described by Garcia as "umbilical cord with history and
reality"2 affected him both literary and politically, as he
taught Garcia lessons from dictionary and for being a
colonel shaped his political ideology. His grandmother was
the main source of cultivating Garcia’s imagination with
mythical stories and folks that Garcia he would later make
use of in his fiction.3 In 1947, Garcia enrolled at
Colombian National University at Bogotá and began studying
law At the same year, he started working as a journalist and
wrote many of his nonfiction works and short stories. But he
only attained his fame after publishing his masterpiece "One
Hundred Years of Solitude" in 1967, around 30 million copies
were sold. Garcia is considered to be the premier pioneer
writer of the Magical-Realism style that is a unique blending
of the marvelous and the mundane in a way that made the
extraordinary seem routine.4
2 Simons, Marlise (5 December 1982), "A Talk With Gabriel García Márquez." The New York Times. www.nytimes.com.Web. 1 Dec.2014. <http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/marquez-talk.html>
3 “Lasting Laurels, Enduring Words: A Salute to the Nobel Laureates of Literature.” The Georgia Review. 49 (1995): 130.4 “Tributes pour in for Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez”. Bbc.com. www. BBC.com. 18
Apr. 2014.web. 1. Dec. 2014 < http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-27076562>
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Garcia married Mercedes Barcha in 1958, then moved to the
Southern United States in 1961, settled in Mexico city and
stopped writing fiction for three years, supporting himself
through journalistic assignments and work on film scripts.5
He retained his inspiration suddenly again in 1965 and
started working on his masterpiece novel “One Hundred years
of Solitude” then published it in 1971. Garcia’s life
radically changed after this novel, as he was not only known
as an internationally novelist but also as a spokesman for
Latin American fiction in general. Later on, he published a
number of works on fiction in the 1970 and i980's, chief
among which are (Leaf Storm and Other Stories, 1972),
(Autumn of the Patriarchy, 1975), (Chronicle of a Death
Foretold, 1981), (Love in the Time of Cholera, 1984), and
(The General in his Labyrinth, 1989). His novels and short
stories won him the noble prize in 1982.6 At last, he
maintained writing novels and diaries till his death at the
age of 82 on 17 April 2014 in Mexico City.
3.1. The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship
5 “Lasting Laurels, Enduring Words: A Salute to the Nobel Laureates of Literature”. The Georgia Review. 49 (1995): 132.6 "The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 2 Dec 2014. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1982/>
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Gabriel Garcia Marquez is best known for his unique style of
making mixture of everyday life with the miraculous, the
historical with the fabulous and psychological realism with
surreal flights of fancy.7
This story is written by using stream of consciousness, as
it starts with a little boy who deepens his observation then
turns to be a dogmatic grown man.
To summarize “The Ghost Ship”, is about a boy whose
imagination is very sharp. Once he sees an enormous ship in
complete darkness close to their village which loses its way
and crushes to the rocks and sinks. The next March, he sees
the same ship and this time tells his mother. The mother
thinks the boy has a mental problem; however, she tells him
to see the ship next time but she dies before March. March
comes again and the boy sees the ship again and calls for
the villagers to come, but they see nothing and start
beating him. When the fourth March comes, the boy goes to
the shore with a light to lead the ship for the correct way.
The ship follows the boy to the village and the boy imagines
its loud siren awakens the villagers and they look at it
astoundingly. This helps him to prove his worth and who he
is, as at the very beginning, he starts uttering “Now they
are going to see who I’m”.
7 Geetha. “Magic Realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude.” Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 3 (2010) : 345. Web. 2 Dec. 2014 < http://rupkatha.com/V2/n3/MagicRealisminMarquez.pdf>
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3.2. The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World
Garcia is also best known for being the pioneer in using the
Magical-Realism style of writing; creating a well-structured
piece of writing that consists of a mixture of mythical and
real elements. For instance, in this short story in which he
uses some factual elements that might happen in the actual
life are combined with few mythical units which
distinctively present his style and aim he strives for.
“The Handsomest” summary of the story is about a corpse of a
dead man washed up to the shore then is taken to the village
that is near to the shore. Next, the villagers investigate
about his identity and go to the neighboring villages to
find out if he is from around, whereas, the women start to
take off the sea weed stuck to his body and clean his body
from the mud. In the process of the cleaning, the women
start to admire him and then become fond of him as they
compare him to their men who are described to be the meanest
and the weakest creatures, as well as they name him Estiban.
Up to men’s return to the village, they declare that Estiban
is not from the neighboring villages and women rejoice for
that, but men become jealous; however, later on, they become
fond of him as they see his face. Finally, they chose a
family for him and make a funeral, and at the end, they
start to plant flowers in the yards and color their houses
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on his honor since he leaves a huge impact on them that they
change their life.
4. Aim
The main purpose of this essay is to answer the following
questions:
-What is characteristic of Garcia's style in both short
stories; “The Last Voyage of The Ghost Ship” and “The
Handsomest Drowned Man in The Worls”, in particular,looking
at the use of adjectives and verbs by comparing and
evaluating them according to Ellegadr’s norm?
-it aims to figure out the stylistic differences and
similarities between both short stories.
5. Stylistics
In the first edition of her Dictionary of Stylistics, Wales
(2001, cited in Davies and Elder, 2004: 331) suggests the
following attempts to the definition of stylistics:
"Stylistics is the study of style . . . Just as style can be
viewed in several ways, so there are several stylistic
approaches. This variety in stylistics is due to the main
influences of linguistics and literary criticism . . . By
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far the most common kind of material studied is literary;
and attention is largely text-centred . . . The goal of most
stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of
texts for their own sake, but in order to show their
functional significance for the interpretation of text; or
in order to relate literary effects to linguistic “causes”
where these are felt to be relevant . . ."8
Aarts and McMahon (2006: 755-756) explain that "stylistics
necessarily involves the simultaneous practice of linguistic
analysis and awareness of the interpretative and social
dimension."9 According to them, this definition confirms
that stylistics is a progressive approach in the sense that
stylisticians attempt continuously to advance their
knowledge of how language works, while at the same time
being aware of the useful insights of its own tradition.
Moreover, Simpson (2004: 2) asserts that "stylistics is a
method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place
is assigned to language."10 Barry (2009: 122) affirms that
"stylistics is a critical approach which uses the methods
and findings of the science of linguistics in the analysis
8 Davies, A. and Elder, C. (2004).The Handbook of Applied Linguistics,(Karko check this again!) Australia: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
9 Aarts, B. and McMahon, A. (2006). The Handbook of English Linguistics,Australia: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
10 Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: a resource book for students. London:Routledge.
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of literary texts".11 At this point, by ‘linguistics’ he
means the scientific study of language and its structures,
rather than the learning of individual languages. He goes on
by clarifying that stylistics is definitely an approach to
literature which has surrendered a large amount of practical
work distinctly different in tone and method from what we
are accustomed to. Furthermore, Short (1996: 1-5) defines
stylistics as "an approach to the analysis of (literary)
texts using linguistic description". Therefore, Stylistics
has to do with two subjects, literature and linguistics. As
a result, the term 'stylistics' can sometimes look like
either linguistics or literary criticism, depending on where
we are looking at . He adds that "stylistics is thus
concerned with relating linguistic facts (linguistic
description) to meaning (interpretation) in as explicit way
as possible"12 (Ibid: page number?).
11 Barry,P. (2009). Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory. 3rd ed. Oxford Road, Manchester: Manchester University
Press.12 Short, M. (1996). Exploring the language of poems, plays, and prose. London: Longman.
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6. Method
In my investigation I counted the number of the adjectives
and verbs within the text of the two short stories mentioned
before (See Aim) to see how frequently they are used. Then
in the analysis statistical results averages are compared
with Ellegard’s norms for the number of adjectives and verbs
that usually a fictional text contains. Ellegard (1978) has
published a set of average frequencies for written English
based on the Brown corpus of American English.13 No parts of
the text where excluded and all has been dealt as a one
unit. Can you explain some about norm of Ellegad, how do we
measure verbs and adjectives and what are the standard
number of adjectives and verbs?
7. Analysis
7.1 “The last Voyage of the Ghost Ship”
In the analysis of this short story, I started to count the
number of adjective and verbs so that I compare with the
other short story in the following sub section and then
achieve some statistical results.
7.1. 1. Adjectives
13 “Manipulating Word Classes.” lancaster.ac.uk. www.lancaster.ac.uk. Web. 6Dec. 2014. <http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic2a/3styletips.htm>
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Number of Words: 2171
Number of Adjectives: 150 (including the repeated
adjectives)
Percentage of words used that are adjectives: 6.90%.
Average of words that is the norm of adjectives used in imaginative prose
(according to Ellegard): 7.8%.
As shown above (6.90%) is the percentage of the adjectives
used in the “The last Voyage” short story, compared to
Ellegard’s norm of adjectives which is (7.8) the difference
is (0.9%). If “The Last Voyage” followed the norm, it would
have contained (169) adjectives.
Many adjectives have repeated through the course of the
story, looking at three of them which have repeated mostly,
they have been shown 13 times, which make up to (8.7%) of
the adjectives used. The words are Same (5 times), huge (4
times), great (4 times).
Garcia’s usage of adjectives almost meets with the standard
average of the norm for adjectives to be used in the
fiction, in which it differs only by (0.9%) out of the norm
which is (7.8%).
Reading the parts related of describing the (Ship), Garcia
repeats many adjectives frequently to show the significance
of that scene or event to the main character; for example,
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the word huge (4 times), great (4 times), longer (2 times), and
taller (2 times) have been used when the main character
depicted the ship heading towards the shore afterwards
leading to shipwreck. This shows the concerns of the writer
to depict the importance of scene which is showed to be the
main concern of the story, thus Garcia uses words in a
repeated way for the sake of foreshadowing and attracting
the attention of readers to event.
7.1. 2. Verbs
Number of Words: 2171
Number of Verbs: 221 (including the repeated verbs)
Percentage of words used that are verbs: 10.17%.
Average of words that is the norm of verbs used in imaginative prose
(according to Ellegard): 12%.
The result above (10.17%) is the average of the verbs used
in “The last Voyage” short story. To compare it with the
normal average of the verbs used in fiction according to
Ellegard, the result would have a difference with (1.83%)
from the norm. Had Garcia followed the norm “The last
Voyage” would have (260) verbs.
Since the story is written in a stream of consciousness, it
is been realized realize that Garcia uses the words in the
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present tense only when the protagonist says his words “Now,
they are going to see who I am” which is used (6 times)
during the course of the story to attract the reader’s
attention to the essential dilemma that the character
suffers from; realize the main word used by the character is
“Sees” which is a stative verbe (verbs of perception) again
indicating to the stream of conciseness which Gracia uses as
a technique.
7.2 “The Handsomest Drowned Man in The World”
7.2. 1. Adjectives
Number of Words: 2474
Number of Adjectives: 147
Percentage of words used that are adjectives: 5.94%.
Average of words that is the norm of adjectives used in imaginative prose
(according to Ellegard): 7.8%.
As listed above, the percentage of (5.94%) is the average of
the adjectives used in “The handsomest” short story,
compared to the norm of Ellegard that is (7.8%) it has a
lack of (1.86%) average from the normal average of the norm.
If the story followed to normal percentage of the usage of
adjectives according to the norm, it would have contained
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(192) adjectives that is equal to (7.8) percentage of the
norm.
Since the story consists of some magical and real elements,
Garcia uses the language very wisely to depict the images in
the story. Thus, he uses many adjectives repeatedly for an
instance the two most repeated words, which used for (24
times), are drowned (14 times) and dead (9 times) and this
become (15.8%) out of the percentage of all the adjectives
used in the story. The significance of this technique is
that Garcia does not give the main character a name at
least in the first part of the story; instead he uses “Dead
man and Drowned man” as a name indicating to the character.
This method is used to refer to the real element of the
story which we might have in our daily life, like a “dead
man”.
7.2. 2. Verbs
Number of Words: 2474
Number of Verbs: 299 (including the repeated verbs)
Percentage of words used that are verbs: 12 %.
Average of words that is the norm of verbs used in imaginative prose
(according to Ellegard): 12%.
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The percentage of (12%) as shown above is the of the verbs
used in “The handsomest” and it exactly matches with
Ellegard’s norm of (12%) for the usage of the verbs in a
fiction prose.
Since the main theme of “The Handsomest” is about change and
transformation, Garcia uses the verb thought (9 times) to
refer to the women and men in the story and how they have
been changed after the arrival of the drowned man to the
village. We see that the transformation must start
internally and then externally. Thus, we realize the verb
thought which is repeated frequently is a stative one
(Perception verb) which fulfills Garcia’s intention behind
its usage.
8. Differences and Similarities
8.1. Adjectives and Verbs
In “The Last Voyage” 6.90% and in “The Handsomest” 5.94% of
all the words are adjectives, which is a low number
according to Ellegar’s norm which is (7.8%), and in both
short stories there is an obvious difference in the usage of
adjectives.
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In “The Handsomest” we realize that (15.8%) of adjectives
are used to refer to the main character and describe him, or
have been used instead of the character’s name; while in
“The Last Voyage” no adjectives are used to refer to the
character or to describe him at all, along the story the
only word used to refer to the character is “he”.
Moreover, in “The Last Voyage”, approximately (10.17%) and
in “The Handsomest” (12 %) are verbs of all the words used
in both short stories. The percentage of “The Last Voyage”
is low in comparing it to Ellegard’s norm which is (12%),
but in “The Handsomest” we see the percentage completely
matches with the norm. Within both short stories, the verbs
which are used in foreshadowing the most important events
are the stative sort of verbs and particularly perceptual
verbs.
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9. Conclusion
In this paper, it is aimed to apply some stylistic analysis
on two short stories: “The Last Voyage of The Ghost Ship”
and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in The world” by Gabriel
Garcia and to attain more knowledge about his style of
writing. A short summary to the writer’s life and his works
is presented, as well as to a short definition of what is
stylistics. Next, in the analysis section, it focused on
thethe stylistic analysis which was mainly quantitative that
tended to show the percentage of the adjectives and verbs
that have been used in the text then compared them with
Ellegerd’s norms for each sort to show whether they differ
or match with them. Finally, in differences and similarities
section we compared and contrasted the both stories and came
up with results.
In this paper, we figured out that the percentages of
adjectives and verbs used in Garcia’s fictions had a slight
difference with Ellegard’s norms for the usage of both
adjectives and verbs. In “The last voyage of the Ghost Ship”
and “The Handsomest Drowned Man in The world” the percentage
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of adjectives and verbs use were (6.9% adjective) and (10.17
verbs) for the first and (5.94% adjective) and (12% verb)
for the last. This makes approximately a slight difference
for adjectives with the average of (0.9-1.86%) for the
adjectives and (0-1.83%) for verbs while comparing them with
norms that are (7.8%) for adjectives and (12%) for verbs.
Moreover, since both short stories meet with the beginning
of Garcia’s career, it is been realized that the style of
writing is very similar in both short stories in terms of
the adjectives and verbs use.
Finally, it is worth having further stylistic studies to be
made on Garcia’s fictions to find out whether his style
changes or not during the long period of his career as a
novelist and short story writer.
10. Bibliography
Aarts, B. and McMahon, A. The Handbook of English
Linguistics.Australia: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, (2006).
Barry, P. Beginning theory: An introduction to literary and cultural theory.
3rd ed. Oxford Road, Manchester: Manchester University
Press, (2009).
18
Davies, A. and Elder, C. The Handbook of Applied Linguistics.
Australia : Blackwell Publishing Ltd, (2004).
Geetha. “Magic Realism in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One
Hundred Years of Solitude.” Rupkatha Journal on
Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities 3 (2010) : 345. Web.
2 Dec. 2014 <
http://rupkatha.com/V2/n3/MagicRealisminMarquez.pdf>
“Lasting Laurels, Enduring Words: A Salute to the Nobel
Laureates of Literature.” The Georgia Review.
49 (1995): 130-132
“Manipulating Word Classes.” lancaster.ac.uk.
www.lancaster.ac.uk. Web. 6 Dec. 2014.
<http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic2a
/3styletips.htm>
Short, M. Exploring the language of poems, plays, and prose. London:
Longman, (1996).
Simons, Marlise (5 December 1982), "A Talk With Gabriel
García Márquez." The New York Times. www.nytimes.com.Web. 1
Dec.2014.
19
<http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/reviews/marquez-
talk.html>
Simpson, P. Stylistics: a resource book for students. London:
Routledge, (2004).
"The Nobel Prize in Literature 1982". Nobelprize.org. Nobel
Media AB 2014. Web. 2 Dec 2014.
<http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates
/1982/>
“Tributes pour in for Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez”. Bbc.com. www.
BBC.com. 18 Apr. 2014.web. 1. Dec. 2014 < http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-
america-27076562>
Vulliamy,Ed. “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: The Greatest Colombian
Who Ever Lived.” The Guardian.com. www.theguardian.com. 19
Apr. 2014 Web. 1. Dec. 2014. <
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/apr/19/gabrielgarciama
rquez-colombia>
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