"Axolotl" begins with a straightforward summary of its plot: "There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls. I went to see them in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes and stayed for hours watching them, observing their immobility, their faint movements. Now I am an axolotl." The narrator later clarifies that an axolotl is the larval stage of a type of salamander.

The narrative then delves into the extraordinary transformation. The narrator, a man residing in Paris, has grown tired of the lions and panthers he usually observes at the zoo, the Jardin des Plantes. He decides to explore the aquarium and unexpectedly "hits it off with the axolotls." A sign above the tank mentions they are Mexican, but he already knows this because their pink faces remind him of Aztecs. He begins visiting the axolotls multiple times a day, spending hours peering through the glass and studying them intently. He becomes particularly captivated by their golden eyes, which suggest to him "the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing."

As time passes, he feels an increasing connection with the axolotls. One day, as he presses his face against the glass, he suddenly realizes he is no longer looking at an axolotl inside the tank but at his own face, staring into the tank from outside. In that moment, he understands it is impossible for the man to comprehend the world of the axolotl: "He was outside the aquarium, his thinking was a thinking outside the tank. Recognizing him, being him himself, I was an axolotl and in my world." Initially horrified at the thought of being "buried alive" among "unconscious creatures," his fear dissipates as he realizes that, although the axolotls cannot communicate, they all share his awareness.

The man visits the tank less and less frequently, and the axolotl-consciousness eventually recognizes that their connection has been severed. In the "final solitude" where the man "no longer comes," the axolotl consoles itself with the hope that the man might write a story that will convey "all this about axolotls."

The unnamed narrator of "Axolotl" is a solitary man who becomes so captivated by axolotls that he believes he transforms into one. Cortazar offers limited details about the narrator, but the ones he does provide are quite insightful. On a spring morning, with Paris "spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent," the narrator visits the Jardin des Plantes. He mentions that he is (or "was") a friend of the lions and panthers and had never entered the "dark and humid" aquarium before. This indicates the narrator's attraction to all things beautiful and assertive in nature: the morning, spring, lions, and panthers.

However, it is only when he finds the lions "ugly and sad" and the panthers asleep—failing to live up to his ideal—that he decides to enter the aquarium. By choosing the beautiful and assertive, he has overlooked another aspect of nature, represented by the dark aquarium. The narrator is desperate to understand the axolotls' minds. He believes their golden eyes communicate "the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing." Some critics interpret the narrator as a symbol of the modern individual in search of self-realization and spirituality.

Narrator

In "Axolotl," the unnamed narrator is a solitary man who becomes so captivated by axolotls (Mexican salamanders) that he believes he transforms into one. Although Cortazar provides limited information about the narrator, the details offered are telling. On a spring morning, with Paris "spreading its peacock tail after a wintry Lent," the narrator visits the Jardin...