Final Project - Second Entry MRojo

Short Story Analysis - Blow Up by Cortazar

Narrative Point of View:

This short story is shown through the perspective of the main character Michael, which it means that it’s a first person narrator. But there are some parts of the story where Michael starts talking about himself in third person, which it makes it more confusing for the reader. The purpose of these changes is to show the two personalities of Michael, because he’s not a stable person.

Setting:

Michael is writing down the story of his experience, which setting is a Parisian park where Michael took a picture of a man and a woman. The exact date was Sunday, November 7. But the main setting is Michael’s room which is the present time.

Characters:

Michael is the protagonist of the story and since the beginning of the story we can see that he’s a very distracted man, because he’s trying to find a way to tell the story. The focus of the story is his internal thoughts. The scene where he’s taking the photo, he realizes that it was a homosexual seduction by the man who was in the car. And at the end of the story he reveals to the reader that his mental breakdown is related to the experience with the blow-up.  At the end Michael tells the reader that he doesn’t see anymore the boy and the girl in the photo, instead he sees a scene of nature.

Man, woman, and the man in the car: Secondary characters.

Plot:

        The plot starts when Michael is at the park looking through the lens of his camera the perfect picture, then he sees a man and a woman, and Michael starts to describe their reactions and feelings. Michel gradually figures out what was going on in the park, which leads to a traumatic climax, where the man and woman realized that someone was taking pictures of them both. The man runs away with the man at the car. In the end we can see how difficult was to Michael to tell his experience.

Symbols:

        Clouds and birds: He constantly interrupts the story to describe them. At the end, it turns out to be his hallucinations about what he sees in the film he's projecting on the wall.

        Blow-up: Becomes Michael’s instrument of revelation. It shows that what he thought he saw was actually something else.

Language:

        Michael's language is quite poetic, where he uses long sentences and very extensive descriptions, and some relevant meanings of words.

Theme:

        At the beginning of the story we can see Michael's extraordinary confidence to observe, because he understands what he sees. However, after taking the picture in the park he realizes the truth intentions of them both, which was a homosexual seduction. Later he feels blind because he wasn’t able to see it before. In the end he says “I don’t want to see anymore” because he has no longer confidence, and as a consequence he had a mental breakdown.