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.
Symbols & Motifs
The Axolotl
The axolotl itself is one of the story’s central symbols. The narrator notes that the axolotl is “the larval stage (provided with gills) of a species of salamander” (4). He also notes that they are capable of surviving drought by living on land before eventually returning to the water. The axolotl is a liminal creature, trapped between different stages of development and even different habitats. This liminality reflects the narrator’s own mindset when he first approaches the axolotls; he is isolated from human contact and is trying (unsuccessfully) to find connection in the world of animals. The larval nature of the axolotl also speaks to a life characterized by transformation. This foreshadows the mental and physical Transformative Obsession the narrator undergoes through the story.
The axolotl is also often described in terms of its geographic Otherness. Early in the story, the narrator notes that they are Mexican and have “little Aztec faces” (4), and later he likens them to “Chinese figurines of milky glass” (5). These descriptions figure the Axolotl as a geographically displaced Other—a characterization that reflects Cortázar’s own experience of immigration and exile. In this way, the axolotl acts as a symbol of the liminality and Otherness that the narrator longs to understand in order to better understand himself.
The Axolotls’ Enclosure
Early in the story, the narrator fixates on the axolotls’ enclosure. He says that “The axolotls huddled on the wretched narrow (only I can know how narrow and wretched) floor of moss and stone in the tank” (4). He repeatedly mentions that the enclosure is so small that the axolotls are nearly on top of one another, their feet grazing each other’s faces. The obsession with the claustrophobia of the enclosure mirrors the increasing sense of entrapment the narrator feels as he gives himself over to his obsession. Initially, the obsession with the axolotls seems to offer him an entirely new way of seeing the world, but the final result is that he becomes entombed alongside the axolotls. The parenthetical in his first description of the enclosure also foreshadows the way in which the narrator’s knowledge of the axolotls will eventually become inaccessible even to himself (i.e., the human-narrator), just as the knowledge of the extent of the narrowness and wretchedness is inaccessible to readers.
The Axolotl’s Eye
Outside of the axolotl itself, the animal’s eye is the story’s most complicated symbol. The narrator repeatedly offers descriptions of the axolotls’ eyes. Early in the story they are “two orifices, like brooches, wholly of transparent gold, lacking any life but looking, letting themselves be penetrated by [the narrator’s] look, which seemed to travel past the golden level and lose itself in a diaphanous interior mystery” (5). Later on, he describes “their blind gaze, the diminutive gold disc without expression and nonetheless terribly shining” (7), as well as the fact that the eyes “devour” him in a “cannibalism of gold” (7). The repeated emphasis on the goldenness of the eye underscores how simultaneously alien yet desirable the axolotl is to the narrator. The eye is the entry point through which the narrator begins to understand the axolotl; eventually, the eyes are also the windows he becomes trapped behind once he enters the axolotl. In this way, the imagery surrounding the eyes is at once enticing yet annihilating, unknowable yet intimately described.
