Axolotl

“I was friend of the lions and panthers, but had never gone into the dark, humid building that was the aquarium. I left my bike against the gratings and went to look at the tulips. The lions were sad and ugly and my panther was asleep. I decided on the aquarium, looked obliquely at banal fish until, unexpectedly, I hit it off with the axolotls.”

This passage offers an example of indirect characterization of the narrator. Cortázar suggests the nature of the narrator’s isolation from the external world via his desire to form connections with animals, which is so strong that he describes it in mutualistic terms. The narrator does not simply become interested in the axolotls but rather “hits it off” with them—a phrase that implies reciprocity.

“I stayed watching them for an hour and left, unable to think of anything else.”

This is the beginning of the narrator’s obsession. The simple, direct clauses underscore the absolute lack of rationale surrounding the genesis of this obsession.

“That they were Mexican I knew already by looking at them and their little pink Aztec faces and the placard at the top of the tank. I read that specimens of them had been found in Africa capable of living on dry land during the periods of drought, and continuing their life under water when the rainy season came. I found their Spanish name, ajolote.”

This initial characterization of the axolotl begins to define the amphibian’s symbolic purpose in the narrative. Here, the narrative figures them as liminal creatures that are geographically Othered (as compared to the story’s European setting)—traits that are crucial to developing the theme of The Desire to Understand the Other. Coupled with the narrator’s sense that the axolotls belong to another time, the reference to the Aztec civilization opens the door to postcolonial readings in which the axolotls, like that former empire, are a source of romanticized “strangeness” to the West.

“I would lean up against the iron bar in front of the tanks and set to watching them. There’s nothing strange in this, because after the first minute I knew that we were linked, that something infinitely lost and distant kept pulling us together.”

This is the first line of reasoning the narrator gives to justify his obsession. This passage indicates the narrator’s tendency to retreat into linguistic abstraction when trying to explain his interiority; he cannot explain what draws him to the axolotls in any concrete way, although the fact that the “something” that unites them is “lost and distant” reflects his own alienation.

“Once in a while a foot would barely move, I saw the diminutive toes poise mildly on the moss. It’s that we don’t enjoy moving a lot, and the tank is so cramped—we barely move in any direction and we’re hitting one of the others with our tail or our head—difficulties arise, fights, tiredness.”

This passage marks the first point of view shift in the story. The shift is abrupt, coming in a paragraph that has previously been narrated in the first person singular.

“Above all else, their eyes obsessed me. In the standing tanks on either side of them, different fishes showed me the simple stupidity of their handsome eyes so similar to our own. The eyes of the axolotls spoke to me of the presence of a different life, of another way of seeing.”

This is one of the primary passages in which the narrator characterizes the symbol of the axolotl’s eye. This is an example of how the narrator’s fixation drives him to understand his reality in new ways. He here identifies that “other way of seeing” as distinctly nonhuman by comparing the axolotls’ eyes to the fishes’ more “similar” gaze. Elsewhere, however, he suggests a close affinity between humans and axolotls—an ambivalence that reflects the narrator’s own fractured sense of self.

“They continued to look at me, immobile; from time to time the rosy branches of the gills stiffened. In that instant I felt a muted pain; perhaps they were seeing me, attracting my strength to penetrate into the impenetrable thing of their lives. They were not human beings, but I had found in no animal such a profound relation with myself.”

This passage offers an example of the narrator’s transformative obsession. Here, the desire to understand the world of the axolotl actually begins to affect his physicality, foreshadowing the more complete transformation to come.

“The axolotls were like witnesses of something, and at times like horrible judges.”

This characterization of the axolotls extends the symbolic work done by the narrative’s fixation on the axoltols’ eyes. This line characterizes the axolotl as both passive and active—a duality that both perplexes and fascinates the narrator.

“They were larvas, but larva means disguise and also phantom. Behind those Aztec faces, without expression but of an implacable cruelty, what semblance was awaiting its hour?”

This passage demonstrates the narrator’s inability to fully interpret and make sense of the axolotls’ reality. This failure of understanding results in a feeling of terror.

“I think that had it not been for feeling the proximity of other visitors and the guard, I would not have been bold enough to remain alone with them. ‘You eat them alive with your eyes, hey,’ the guard said, laughing; he likely thought I was a little cracked. What he didn’t notice was that it was they devouring me slowly with their eyes, in a cannibalism of gold.”

This passage offers the only moment of spoken dialogue in the story. This helps characterize the guard as a foil for the narrator and demonstrates the narrator’s rejection of the external world; his only detailed interaction with another human involves misperception and miscommunication. By contrast, the word choice implies the narrator’s increasing identification with the axolotls, as one can only be “cannibalized” by a member of one’s own species.

“So there was nothing strange in what happened. My face was pressed against the glass of the aquarium, my eyes were attempting once more to penetrate the mystery of those eyes of gold without iris, without pupil. I saw from very close up the face of an axolotl immobile next to the glass. No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the outside of the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood.”

This is the moment in which part of the human-narrator’s consciousness transforms into the axolotl-narrator. This passage is an example of how Cortázar uses paragraph structure to underscore the inexorable nature of the narrator’s transformation. The shift happens mid-paragraph, with only the clause “No transition and no surprise” to indicate that it has occurred.

“The horror began—I learned in the same moment—of believing myself prisoner in the body of an axolotl, metamorphosed into him with my human mind intact, buried alive in an axolotl, condemned to move lucidly among unconscious creatures.”

Here, the confinement and claustrophobia foreshadowed by the symbolism of the axolotls’ enclosure is made real for the narrator. However, the passage associates this “horror” with what it implies is a misperception: that the narrator is a human trapped inside the body of an axolotl rather than an axolotl himself. A moment later, the narrator concludes that the other axolotls are conscious in the way that he is and that he fully shares their experience—an experience that is both human and utterly inhuman. The passage thus captures the tensions surrounding the divide between self and Other.

“Since the only thing I do is think, I could think about him a lot. It occurs to me that at the beginning we continued to communicate, that he felt more than ever one with the mystery which was claiming him. But the bridges were broken between him and me, because what was his obsession is now an axolotl, alien to his human life. I think that at the beginning I was capable of returning to him in a certain way—ah, only in a certain way—and of keeping awake his desire to know us better.”

In the story’s final paragraph, the axolotl-narrator identifies the double-edged outcome of the narrator’s Desire to Understand the Other. His attempt achieved a momentary communication that resulted in an understanding so alien that it is no longer part of the human-narrator. Cortázar underscores this point by inverting the action of the first paragraph: Where the narrator previously “thought” about axolotls, the axolotl-narrator now ‘thinks” about a human, whose viewpoint the story no longer directly represents.