Cortázar, Julio - Pamela McNab (essay date 1997)
Pamela McNab (essay date 1997)
SOURCE: McNab, Pamela. “Julio Cortázar's Axolotl: Literary Archaeology of the Unreal.” The International Fiction Review 24, nos. 1-2 (1997): 12-22.
[In the following essay, McNab asserts that Cortázar's depiction of the unreal in “Axolotl” was “inspired by a variety of literary sources, both classical and modern.”]
“Axolotl” (Final del juego, “end of the game”), one of Julio Cortázar's masterpieces, chronicles one man's discovery of the axolotls, rather unusual-looking amphibians, his growing obsession with them and, ultimately, his supposed transformation into an axolotl. One of the better known and most frequently analyzed of all Cortázar's stories, “Axolotl” quickly establishes and perpetuates an aura of ambiguity surrounding the narrator and the axolotls which causes the reader to question the nature of reality.1 Consequently, the text's openness has...
[The entire page is 5463 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
Navigate
