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“Axolotl" by Julio Cortazar (Summary)

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"Axolotl" by Julio Cortázar explores the transformation of a man into an axolotl, reflecting themes of identity and alienation. The narrator becomes obsessed with axolotls, visiting them daily at a Paris aquarium. Fascination turns into a metaphysical transformation as he perceives his former self from within the tank. The story suggests a deeper commentary on the immigrant experience, mirroring Cortázar's own life transitions. Ultimately, it highlights the alienation and incomprehensibility of existence.

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INTRODUCTION

Axolotl” by Julio Cortazar is fromEnd of the Game and Other Stories,published in 1956. Cortazar was an Argentine novelist, essayist, short story writer, and poet who immigrated to France in 1951, living there for three decades until his death in 1984.

Cortazar was born in Belgium, grew up in Argentina, and immigrated to France after becoming a vocal opposition to Argentina’s Justicialist Party ruler Juan Perón, who was defined by populist and authoritarian priorities.

Cortazar’s works are rich with classic Latin American techniques of the time, using existentialism and magical realism to write experimental stories that oftentimes dug far deeper than a simple reading of the text allows.

Originally published in Spanish, “Axolotl” is an allegorical story about a man who transforms into an axolotl. On the surface, the story seems simple, but when you take into account the transformations Cortazar went through in his...

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lifetime moving from country to country, a more complex understanding of the story takes hold. Perhaps the story is about how he felt as a Latin American immigrant in France, in a sense, forced out of his own country.

Native to Mexico, axolotls are a species of salamander that remains in its larval stage throughout its life.

SUMMARY

The story begins with the narrator's admission: “There was a time when I thought a great deal about axolotls.” He reflects on a day when he visited the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes (a famous botanical garden in Paris, France).

He recalls how his fascination began on a beautiful spring morning in Paris as he walked the streets and thought of the lions and panthers at the zoo. At the zoo, he finds the lions looking depressed and the panthers asleep, so he decides to visit the aquarium. To his surprise, he is fascinated by the axolotls.

After he meets the axolotls, he goes to the library at Sainte-Genevieve to research the strange creature. He learns that axolotls are the larval stage of a specific salamander of the genus Ambystoma, which is native to Mexico. He claims he could tell they were Mexican by their “little pink Aztec faces.” Moreover, he learns that some specimens have been found on dry land in Africa and that they were considered edible.

The narrator starts to visit the aquarium daily, sometimes twice a day, to spend time with the axolotls. He notices how they huddle together, remain mostly inactive in the aquarium tanks, and then admits that he feels “linked” to them.

He admires their “quietness,” admitting that it is what first drew him into their world, and claims to understand their desire to “abolish space and time with an indifferent immobility.” Eventually, it is their eyes that intrigue him the most because they prove to the narrator the existence of a different way of seeing the world. He presses his face against the glass to gleam a clearer observation, but the guards cough to encourage him not to touch the tanks.

He ponders the metaphorical reason for the existence of axolotls, deciding their condemnation to a helpless meditation makes them martyrs that he both admires and sympathizes with. One day, he looks, with his face pressed against the glass, into the eyes of an axolotl until what he sees becomes his face looking back at him through the outside of the aquarium glass.

Once he sees his former self, looking at his new, axolotl self, the only thing he believes for certain is that nothing can be fully understood. He feels a sense of horror as he begins to understand the implications of his new form. He can not communicate his feelings of condemnation other than to look expressionless at the other axolotls stuck inside the aquarium with him.

Time passes as he lives his new life with the mind of a human trapped inside the body of the caged axolotl. Over time, the face that he once recognized as his own stops visiting the aquarium. He spends a lot of his time thinking about his former self and realizes the bridge that once connected them has broken off completely.

In the end, he laments his new life as an axolotl, knowing that all he can hope for is that one day, his human form will write a story about axolotls for the world to read.

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