Blow-up Analysis- Alex Quiroz

Blowup- Julio Cortázar

Point of View-

The story is narrated in the first, second and third person point of view. Cortazar debates in the very begining of the story the way he wants to tell it, whether first second or third. He eventually concludes with "What he Hell" and procedes to use all three.

Plot-

The narration of the story actually starts halfway through it, as again mentioned in the beginning of it. Where Michael, the main character, starts to describe the scene he just witnessed and introduces himself as a photographer and pretty good at seeing. Once he finds a woman seducing a boy at the park and is weirdly intrigued by it and eventually takes a photograph of it at the climax of the seduction. He then reveals the photo and it turns out to be a homosexual seduction, this fact drives Michael crazy and traumatized by the photo.

Setting-

Early to mid-20th Century Paris, whether it is Michael’s apartment or the park where he photographs the boy’s seduction.

Symbols-

The increase of size of the photography, as it reveals otherwise of what Michael thought he saw.

The clouds and pigeons, they detonate Michael’s supposed ability to observe and detail, but all end up being hallucinations and a part of his vision of his photography.

Conflict-

Man vs. Self. Michael’s recalling of the event and the revelation of the blow-up are contrasting, he told the story wrongly and he isn´t really seeing what was there. The fact that the protagonist´s reality is shifted so radically that he doesn´t even know in which one he is at the beginning of the narration, as the clouds and pigeons symbolize, the mixture of realities. When he screams: “I don´t want to see anymore”, even though he praises himself over that same thing is Michael turning himself to his own flaw and it appears to be too much for him.

In the level of detail throughout the story, Cortazar sets up what would become the trauma and climax that his character will go through. The fact that the narrator fixates so much on every detail he can remember of the seduction, and makes the same in the actual reveal of the blowup, that Michael has no reason nor reference what is real or not to him. Him not wanting to see anymore is also representing him wanting to escape any sense of reality he can come up with, as he is unsure of his mental and physical state.