28 pages • 56 minutes read
Julio CortázarAxolotl
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1952A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
The Narrator
The unnamed narrator of “Axolotl” is a dynamic protagonist whose internal conflict not only drives the narrative but serves as the narrative’s primary plot. The narrative of “Axolotl” consists almost exclusively of the narrator relating his obsession with the axolotls and showing how this obsession results in the story’s final transformation.
Cortázar reveals almost nothing about the narrator’s background directly. The choice to use first person narration means that everything readers learn about the narrator comes either from what he chooses to say or from what they can glean from the decisions he makes and the actions he takes. One example of the narrator’s indirect characterization comes early in the story, when he begins observing the axolotls huddled in their enclosure. The narrator notes that he feels “[d]isconcerted, almost ashamed” to watch the creatures (4). Initially, it’s unclear why this would be a first response to seeing these animals. Coupled with the narrator’s cagey interactions with the guard, though, the remark suggests that the narrator is a character who feels trapped in his own life, unable to successfully make meaningful contact in the external world, and that the reminder of this alienation is what he responds to so forcefully. He sees the axolotls as a reflection of his own internal conflicts, a perspective that creates these feelings of shame.
Despite his isolation, the narrator is an empathetic character; he is strongly driven to understand how the axolotls feel and how they understand their world. This quality is central in developing the story’s theme of The Desire to Understand the Other. It is the narrator’s obsessive empathy, though, that is also his hamartia. It is his need to understand the axolotls that results in the Dissolution of Identity that bifurcates him entirely, resulting in a human-narrator and an axolotl-narrator by the end of the story.
The Axolotl
Until the story’s final paragraphs, the axolotls are defined almost entirely through the human-narrator’s perspective. They are the focal point of the narrator’s Transformative Obsession and are rendered in great detail. They are described as having an “indifferent immobility” (5) and being “slaves of their own bodies, condemned infinitely to the silence of the abyss” (7). Through these descriptions, the narrator characterizes the axolotls as helpless and even suffering creatures who exist in a state of isolation despite their close proximity to one another in the enclosure.
In spite of this apparent helplessness, though, the narrator does ascribe some agency to the axolotls. He claims that they are more than just animals because they have an intelligence and perception that speaks of “a mysterious humanity” (6). He also claims that the gaze of the axolotl both consumes and judges him. The axolotls take on an increasingly sinister affect as the story progresses. The narrator says that he is afraid of them because he sees in their expression “an implacable cruelty” (7). Though the axolotls themselves are not dynamic characters, their characteristics (or the characteristics the narrator ascribes to them) trigger the transformation in the narrator that structures the narrative.
In the story’s final paragraph, a part of the narrator’s consciousness transforms into an axolotl. Two characteristics define the axolotl-narrator’s existence. The first is (he says) a complete understanding of what it is like to live as an axolotl—an understanding so complete that the human-narrator is no longer able to access the part of himself that is now axolotl. However, this understanding means that the axolotl-narrator’s life is now also one of imprisonment and the absolute inability to communicate. The axolotl-narrator represents the consequences of both the narrator’s obsession and his Desire to Understand the Other (including his desire to understand himself as the Other).
The Guard
The aquarium guard is a secondary character who is mentioned on only three occasions in the story. The first mention comes early in the narrator’s visits to the axolotls; the narrator notes that the guard “smile[s] perplexedly” (4) when taking his ticket. Later, the guard “cough[s] fussily” (5) whenever the narrator gets too close to the enclosure. In these instances, the guard acts as a foil for the narrator; his presence in the scene emphasizes the strangeness and intensity of the narrator’s obsession.
The guard’s final appearance is also the only instance of spoken dialogue in “Axolotl.” As the guard watches the narrator interact with the axolotls, he says, “You eat them alive with your eyes, hey” (7), and the narrator reflects that the guard doesn’t understand that it’s the axolotls that are consuming him. This interaction gives further shape to the guard’s role as a foil for the narrator. The guard represents the external, human world—a role emphasized by his position as the only character in the story who communicates verbally. The fact that the narrator doesn’t engage the guard during this interaction shows the extent to which the narrator has become separated from the external world.
