Two of the finest short stories by the Chilean novelist José Donoso …, "Paseo" and "Santelices," deal with humdrum characters whose quiet lives are disrupted when they develop a peculiar fascination with animals. There is no direct commentary to interpret the characters' outlandish behavior, however, nor to indicate to what extent it might be realistically credible. (p. 115)

The narrator of "Paseo" tells of the personality change that took place in his aunt, a rigid, orderly spinster, wholly devoted to the well-being of her three brothers, whose housekeeper she was. Suddenly forsaking the domestic ritual of a lifetime, she took to wandering around the streets until one night she disappeared and was never heard from again. No motive is given for this transformation save that a strange little alley dog had intruded into her life and household and then returned to the streets whence it came, taking her along.

Unquestionably, the sight of the dog shivering in a doorway one rainy morning had shaken Matilde, touching some dormant or unsuspected emotion. The wretched animal, wounded, abject, and disfigured by multiple crossbreedings, epitomized everything that she most abhorred and avoided, everything that she was not…. It is possible that as she looked into the eyes of the little bitch, Matilde perceived her own face, her inferior, animal face, staring back at her from the other side of consciousness. (pp. 115-16)

[Matilde's] existence, just as her brothers', was limited to the world of Logos, hence her intolerance for weakness, inferiority, uncleanliness. Moved as if by some perverse consistency, she spurned or ignored whatever pertained to the world of Eros: "mysterio" … [mystery], "magia" … [magic], "lo fortuito" … [the unexpected], "desperfectos" … [imperfection, the absurd]. All these related words and concepts, with their opposites, are repeated throughout the text, establishing a marked dichotomy between order and chaos, between consciousness and the unconscious, and underscoring the thematic polarity of the story and the archetypal objective it implies: the reconciliation of opposites for a more balanced life. All of which ties in with Donoso's love of symmetry and his refusal to recognize any distinction between opposites in the psychological sense—there being, in his view, no constancy of comportment, no unity of personality. Like Jung, he sees the human psyche as a potential totality, a multifaced whole, whose every mark and attribute includes its contrary. For Jung, this potential wholeness can be realized in proportion as the unknown opposites are brought to consciousness. This is my understanding of Donoso's "obsession" (his word) with demolishing the so-called psychic unity of man—the myth that one is always the same person. In "Paseo," as we shall see, Matilde comes to realize in an instinctive manner the wholly reversed view of herself (what Jung calls the Shadow). Hence the symmetry of the tale. (pp. 116-17)

Equally curious, although seemingly secondary [to the story of Matilde], is the story of the narrator, that is, the nameless adult from whose perspective these childhood memories are recalled. José Donoso finds the question of point of view intriguing: … "[point of view is the great element for exploring, and making, and remaking, and unmaking the writing of a novel]."

In "Paseo" we see a boy whose mother had died and who was growing up in a cold and colorless household. The whole world of Eros was out of his reach, although he longed for it. He wished his aunt would show affection for him, but he always felt he was peripheral to her life…. [He felt] the pull of the unknown: the night of Matilde's first walk he sat in the library … "[listening, anxiously listening to the far off sound of a ship, and to the rumble of the unknown city, terrible yet desired, spread out under the stars]." The sea, the city, night, adventure, the unknown—all of these function here as symbols of the unconscious, which is at once fearsome and desirable because it is the font of life and renewal. The boy stayed on in that constrictive house; and while the upheaval in Matilde's life seemed horrifying to him, what was really horrifying was the brothers' inability to break out of their shell. If as an adult he thinks it was best that she díed after having disappeared, we can surmise that the deadly influence of those three men turned the nephew into a replica of themselves.

But Donoso has given his tale yet another flip and thrown doubt on the fidelity of the narrator's recollections: … "[perhaps my imagination and my memory betray me]." As Donoso was saying, point of view makes and remakes and unmakes the text. Nevertheless, if these dramatic events are products of the narrator's imagination, and this story is his, not Matilde's, the end result is still the same because it reveals his rejection of the Dionysiac principle: the sclerosis of consciousness is then his own, and all the rest projection.

In "Santelices" the point of view is that of the protagonist (although presented in the third person), but here the protagonist suffers from delusions. Santelices is a timorous filing clerk who lives in a rooming house and collects pictures of wild animals of the cat family. The cruel and menacing beauty of these beasts fills him with excitement. His collection is kept secret, especially from his landlady, Bertita, but on the day the story begins this nosey and tyrannical woman finds it and burns it in a rage…. (pp. 119-20)

Meanwhile, from his office window, Santelices has been observing a girl in a patio five flights down. He sees her every day playing with a cat, and later with five or six new kittens. His long-distance friendship with her (wholly onesided) gives him a sense of security and fortitude. Now he feels able to stand up to Bertita, whose ingratiating ways are wearing thin, and he even taunts her. Finally, he tells her a fib about having found a better place to stay and his intention to leave her, which causes her to break into tears. Later that night, following a premonition, he hurries back to his office, looks out the window, and he sees that the girl is now surrounded by panthers and jaguars and tigers, and that she is waiting for him to save her. Without fear or hesitation, he climbs onto the sill and jumps to her rescue.

The main plot, concerning the nameless girl and her cats, is a clear instance of the archetypal hero's dragon fight: she is the captive princess awaiting deliverance from monsters. Understood psychologically, this myth represents the struggle to liberate consciousness from the domination of the unconscious. The drawback for Santelices is, of course, the disastrous outcome which contradicts and seemingly disproves this interpretation of the myth. (p. 120)

After Bertita's blowup, Santelices sits in his office all day trying to put off the moment when he will have to return to his room and find that he has nothing left. The pathos of his destitution is surprisingly moving at any level. Loss of ego is an archetypal and temporary experience in puberty, but it remains to be seen if Santelices' loss is definitive. A transference has immediately taken place from his destroyed photographs to the cats in the patio. These, too, increase in number and size, and yet this repetition is really of secondary importance, because a precious new ingredient has been introduced: the girl as friend and inspirer (whether or not she is a fantasy) points to a great advance over Santelices' previous state, although there is no basis for this progress (since he has fled without protest from Bertita). It is the girl, the Anima, who moves him to conquer the monster of the unconscious at home (Bertita) and to attempt to duplicate his valiant deed in the patio. But, of course, all the minutiae of the heroic dragon fight, with which the author fondly plies us, lead to naught. Santelices, who presumably could be stabilizing his hold on consciousness by transpersonal means, is in fact the victim of a fatal hallucination. (pp. 121-22)

[The] basic similarity between the two stories is that both protagonists experience an instinctual drive toward fulfillment. Matilde submits to it, having learned to recognize a power beyond her control, and literally abandons her former one-sided way of life. Santelices, weaker and immature, surrenders to the fascination of the unconscious images, but is overwhelmed by them and carried helplessly by their impetus to his destruction. (p. 122)