Julio Cortazar: Short Stories Essay Questions

Why does the narrator of "Axolotl" identify so strongly with the axolotls? Why is his human form eventually able to walk away and gradually stop visiting the aquarium altogether?

The narrator of "Axolotl" declares that "the anthropomorphic features of a monkey reveal the reverse of what most people believe, the distance that is traveled from them to us. The absolute lack of similarity between axolotls and human beings proved to me that my recognition was valid, that I was not propping myself up with easy analogies" (6). So it is the difference between axolotls and human beings that affirms the truth of the narrator's identification with the axolotls. Their eyes communicated "the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing" (6) that the narrator longs to understand. The reason that, after the transfer from human to axolotl form, the narrator's former human form is able to abandon him in the aquarium, is because it isn't his full consciousness that transfers to the axolotl—only that part of him that was obsessed with axolotls. So, he leaves this part behind without the ability to fully recognize it as a part of himself trapped inside of an axolotl.

What might be the function of showing Isabel at home with her mother and sister at the beginning of "Bestiary"?

By showing Isabel outside of the Funes estate and establishing her as a city-dweller who is spoiled and doted on by her mother and sister, Cortázar creates an "outsider" character who is then able to disrupt the established order of the Funes estate and ultimately dispense with the most destructive force in household, which is not the tiger, but the Kid. If Isabel were never shown in her own home environment, she would be indistinguishable from the other inhabitants of the estate. Isabel being an outsider allows the reader to learn the ways of the house and avoiding the tiger alongside her.

The narrator of "End of the Game" suggests that Letitia's pride prevents her from speaking openly about her medical condition. How does the letter she writes to Ariel demonstrate Letitia's maturity and understanding of her condition in the eyes of others?

A major tension of "End of the Game" is that the narrator and Holanda are both jealous and concerned about Ariel's special interest in Letitia. They're jealous because he isn't initially attracted to either of them, but their jealousy is curbed by a) their confidence that once Ariel knows about Letitia's condition, he will no longer be attracted to her and B) their concern, because they love Letitia and are afraid that she'll be hurt when this boy ultimately rejects her. Of course, this is not a conversation that they have with Letitia, but there's no need, because nobody understands the situation better than Letitia herself. Letitia writes the letter to Ariel because she doesn't want to put him (or herself) in a situation where he realizes, in person, her medical condition and then is forced to either conceal and repress his true feelings or fail to do—either way, she knows the likelihood of her being hurt is high. Her decision to write a letter and thus allow Ariel to review the facts in private demonstrates a maturity that surpasses her cousins, who cannot possibly understand how she feels at the time (and who often envy her because of the so-called "privileges" that her condition affords her).

How is the craft of short-story writing similar to the craft of photography?

Short stories, like photographs, deal in extreme constraints. Unlike novels, the short story form demands that the author extrapolate a scene or specific circumstance from a whole "planetary system" of circumstances. Cortázar writes of short stories, "a good subject is like a good sun, a star with a planetary system around it of which, many times, we were unaware until the story writer, an astronomer of words, revealed it to us" (Hayes). Cortázar compares short-story writing to photography in that photographers "define their art as an apparent paradox: that of cutting off a fragment of reality, giving it certain limits" that "[open] a much more ample reality" (Hayes).

Explain the irony of the line "Michel is guilty of making literature, of indulging in fabricated unrealities" (124) from "Blow-Up."

Other than the obvious fact that this line is written in a short story, which is by definition literature and a fabricated unreality, the line reminds the reader that pretty much every detail Michel provides about the subjects of his photograph are fabrications. He begins by imagining that the woman and boy are mother and son and then rejects that original hypothesis. But his conclusion that this woman and boy are strangers and that the woman plans on luring the boy to some illicit encounter in an apartment in Paris is just as unsubstantiated as his first hypothesis, that they are mother and son. The line is ironic in the sense that most of the details of "Blow-Up" that occur outside the narrow experience of the narrator are totally unsubstantiated. The narration is not omniscient, but at times, it pretends to be.