Analysis of Blow-Up

Christian David Bauza Gomes

A01375193

English IB

Group 60

Plot: A photographer of Chilean origin is seated in a park trying to capture something of interest.

Themes: Freedom, art, perfection, beauty, false love, perspective of reality through filters.

Characters: Roberto Michel (The photographer/translator), unnamed boy, unnamed woman, unnamed man with newspaper.

Type of conflict: Man vs. Society.

Type of narrator: First person and Third-person.

In Julio Cortazar’s short story “Blow-Up”, a Chilean-French photographer and translator narrates the events that originated some of his recent pictures of a “perfect” and excellent situation involving a man and a woman. He narrates how it began as a simple prediction based on every element in the park at his plain sight, determining how each thing will go out and how the turning point and realization of reality rather than made up inferences and fantasies of possible causes, methods, feelings and people involved was mainly due to the flashing of his camera.

Roberto Michel, a photographer and translator, narrates the story as himself, although sometimes he uses his own name to put another person like him in his anecdote (third-person narration). He also digresses in the third paragraph with thoughts about why is he telling the story, to what end is he telling it, and how it is going propagate throughout the world like a joke told in the office during an ordinary work day. However, he manages to come off from it and begins to tell his experience.

It all began in a park in the city of Paris, France. Roberto was sitting patiently for something to catch his eye to appear so he can capture it like other sights in the city. All of a sudden he notices a rather nervous boy, probably from high school, being flirted by a woman. Roberto makes an inference or prediction about a turn of events that displays romantic feelings and sentiments and decides that this outcome would be perfect for a photograph. However, as soon as he takes it, both the nervous boy and the woman notice, and while the first runs away scared, the latter stays there with emotions of irritation and surprise. Then a man comes out from a car expecting something to happen with the woman and the boy with feelings of surprise as well, making Roberto realize slowly what was actually going on as he looked at the picture…

For this story, Cortazar uses a lot the element of description for each thing (sights, people, things and even reactions and feelings). He uses comparisons of people and their appearance with real life objects in particular situations to appeal to the reader in his imagination of the thing or individual in the story. For example: “As I had nothing else to do, I had more than enough time to wonder why the boy was so nervous, like a young colt or a hare…” Through this brief comparison the reader understands better the indirect description of the boy and has no need for a lot of details to make up the most basic mental image out of own experiences.

Also, one message that he’s trying to communicate through this story is the manifestation of freedom of artistic expression. After taking the photograph, Roberto was nagged by the woman that he can’t take pictures of people without permission and asks him to hand over the photograph. Roberto refuses to, claiming that he has the right to express his perception of beauty and perfection of a sight in a free manner without limitations and through changes or conditions that make a person understand better his message through it.

However, although Cortazar manages to be both detailed through several of Roberto’s long descriptions and message of free expression of art and through real life comparisons of characters, the complexity of his writing and continuity of the events can cause the reader to get lost in what the Chilean photographer and translator is narrating. For example: Roberto says he’s alive in the second paragraph and it is proven in pg. 110 when he makes an enlargement of the pictures he took, but at the end of the story he says that he sees clouds and birds almost every day after the event. This leaves the reader wondering the real fate of Roberto Michel and having a sense of mental delusion of Roberto.

We’ve always heard that photography reproduces reality faithfully. In Blow-Up, Cortazar presents this way of art expression as a way of translation. Roberto uses both writing and images as media to interpret the world around him and Cortazar uses his different points of view in the story to explain his analogy. Regarding the story’s writing, the narrator changes constantly between being the character (1^st Person) and being the witness (3^rd Person). Same thing occurs in photograph: A person can limit himself or herself to being only an spectator or get in the picture to change, making a zoom or a blow-up to uncover hidden details.