Period 5 9/15/15 The Handsomest Drowned Man Humans are social creatures, creatures who desire others. When cut off from society, they desire a god or an idol to believe in for them to escape from the material world. In the short story ?The Handsomest Drowned Man? by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Esteban shows up to an obsolete town in the middle of nowhere. It is then the people treat him as a false idol and shower him in gifts, thinking that he can fulfill their desires. Marquez shows that idols are born through emotional longing.