The Separation between the Fantastic and the Real in the Stories of Julio Cortázar
Throughout the following research paper, we will develop the literary analysis of the stories "The night face up” “After lunch” “The Axolotl” and “Cefalea” by Julio Cortazar. I chose this author because we can enjoy his literature in which reality is transformed into fantasy, which catches us and forces us to interpret it.
The author chosen belongs to the "boom" of Latin American literature. That is why his style is avant-garde and uses surrealism as the only way to represent reality. The main characteristic of his fantastic narrative is the application of unusual and suggestive elements; always part of daily situations combined with paranormal …show more content…
The first story describes how a man leaves a hotel driving his motorcycle, while driving he observes buildings and houses. Suddenly, a woman crosses his path, they have an accident and he shreds an arm. The protagonist loses his sense and when he awakes from the fainting, he is entering a hospital. They have bandaged him and he is in a bed with fever in a state of stupor, because of the accident and the medication the doctors prescribed him, he falls asleep and has a dream. He dreams curiously that he is a Mexican Indian of the Aztec age, who is lost among the marshes and feels persecuted by an enemy tribe who wants to sacrifice him. He wakes up repeatedly at first relieved but then confused, the last few times trying to avoid that nightmare until he discovers that the dream really was reality. The second story is interspersed with the first because it is the supposed dream. Describes an episode of the Florida war where an Aztec Indian is persecuted by an enemy tribe, the Motecas, although he escapes and fights for his life, in the end he is captured, attacked and dragged towards the great pyramid. There, there is a priest awaits him with a dagger, to sacrifice him since this was a rite of this tribe. The narrator describes how although he knew now he was not going to wake up, that he was awake, that the marvelous dream had been the other, absurd as all dreams are (Blackburn 66). Peden, in his essay “The Latin …show more content…
The story unfolds in Paris, so we speak of a modern man who is the character, a lonely, tenuous, self-absorbed, perhaps misunderstood and seeking in his solitude, perhaps the output of his inner maze tormented by the city, by materialism, by its ferocity; And the response to his social failure. That is why he was identified with the Axolotl, beings alone, immobile, impenetrable, with an unfathomable look. McNab, in her essay “Literary Archeology of the Unreal,” writes that “they embody both light and dark, they are both humanlike and yet, at other times, animals that resemble us very little. Not surprisingly, they also seem both dead and alive” (McNab 20). Indeed the narrator saw in the axolotl his identity; it was reflected in one of them, subtly separated by the glass. The crystal is undoubtedly the barrier that prevents man from encountering his true self. The crystal of the aquarium is a universal aspect; it is therefore the manifestation of the fear of man to the discovery of his intimate vocation, to the discernment of his thoughts, to the search without negation of freedom and breaking of
Throughout the following research paper, we will develop the literary analysis of the stories "The night face up” “After lunch” “The Axolotl” and “Cefalea” by Julio Cortazar. I chose this author because we can enjoy his literature in which reality is transformed into fantasy, which catches us and forces us to interpret it.
The author chosen belongs to the "boom" of Latin American literature. That is why his style is avant-garde and uses surrealism as the only way to represent reality. The main characteristic of his fantastic narrative is the application of unusual and suggestive elements; always part of daily situations combined with paranormal …show more content…
The first story describes how a man leaves a hotel driving his motorcycle, while driving he observes buildings and houses. Suddenly, a woman crosses his path, they have an accident and he shreds an arm. The protagonist loses his sense and when he awakes from the fainting, he is entering a hospital. They have bandaged him and he is in a bed with fever in a state of stupor, because of the accident and the medication the doctors prescribed him, he falls asleep and has a dream. He dreams curiously that he is a Mexican Indian of the Aztec age, who is lost among the marshes and feels persecuted by an enemy tribe who wants to sacrifice him. He wakes up repeatedly at first relieved but then confused, the last few times trying to avoid that nightmare until he discovers that the dream really was reality. The second story is interspersed with the first because it is the supposed dream. Describes an episode of the Florida war where an Aztec Indian is persecuted by an enemy tribe, the Motecas, although he escapes and fights for his life, in the end he is captured, attacked and dragged towards the great pyramid. There, there is a priest awaits him with a dagger, to sacrifice him since this was a rite of this tribe. The narrator describes how although he knew now he was not going to wake up, that he was awake, that the marvelous dream had been the other, absurd as all dreams are (Blackburn 66). Peden, in his essay “The Latin …show more content…
The story unfolds in Paris, so we speak of a modern man who is the character, a lonely, tenuous, self-absorbed, perhaps misunderstood and seeking in his solitude, perhaps the output of his inner maze tormented by the city, by materialism, by its ferocity; And the response to his social failure. That is why he was identified with the Axolotl, beings alone, immobile, impenetrable, with an unfathomable look. McNab, in her essay “Literary Archeology of the Unreal,” writes that “they embody both light and dark, they are both humanlike and yet, at other times, animals that resemble us very little. Not surprisingly, they also seem both dead and alive” (McNab 20). Indeed the narrator saw in the axolotl his identity; it was reflected in one of them, subtly separated by the glass. The crystal is undoubtedly the barrier that prevents man from encountering his true self. The crystal of the aquarium is a universal aspect; it is therefore the manifestation of the fear of man to the discovery of his intimate vocation, to the discernment of his thoughts, to the search without negation of freedom and breaking of