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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