Blow-up analysis (Luis)

The story shifts between the First Person Narrator and Michel talking about himself in the Third Person. It's clear that it is Michel who is telling the story. First person narration is the dominant mode and that the third person narration is part of how Michel talks about himself.

The plot is Michel's telling of his experience of taking a photograph of a couple in a park, then his study of a blow-up of the photo, and his discovery of what was really going on.

It is a mystery story in which you and Michel gradually figure what is going on in the park that leads to the traumatic climax that makes Michel being almost unable to tell his story.

The main setting is Michel's room where he is looking at the blow-up on the wall as he's writing the story of his experience on a typewriter. (In the present)

The secondary setting is the park area when Michel took the photograph of the woman and the boy. (In the past)

Michel is the main character; the others exist only in Michel’s story. His story of taking the photo in the park and then the experience with the blow-up reveals. We realize that the narrator is having trouble telling his story at the begging at the end after the reveal of the hallucinations with the blow-up we realize that it caused him some kind of mental damage. His experience of taking the photo of what he thought was a simple seduction scene, and then discovering by studying the blow-up that it was a homosexual seduction by the man in the car becomes for him a overwhelming experience of evil which causes a psychotic break.

At the end we understand that the clouds that are passing since the beginning of the story are just Michel’s hallucinations after his psychotic break.

The most interesting thing about the language is how Cortazar simulates the mind of a character that has a mental breakdown after having a traumatic experience in his life. From making poetic phrases and creating mystery with useless thing like the clouds Cortazar wraps you in the mid of his mentally damaged character.

The theme of the story is mainly the problem that Michel has telling his story after watching the attempt of a homosexual seduction. Cortazar uses his mentally damaged character as the narrator making it almost impossible to understand what he is saying until the end when he gets his shit together and actually make sense of something.