Madeline McDonald-Lane
LIT1
8 December 2010
When Words Fail, Actions Speak
Paris during the 1950s embodied the center of the French existential movement. It is no wonder, then, that a scholar should pick up on the ideas that swirled about the city of lights. Julio Cortazar, that said scholar, did so, and found himself attracted to the works of Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre advanced the existential movement though his written work, and Cortarzar, not just a scholar, but an author as well, digested his dogma. He regurgitates what he read in his short story, Axolotl. The events and concepts implemented in the tale provide examples that explain Sartre's concepts.Axolotl, which spans only a few pages, recounts a tale about an unnamed boy who becomes so entranced and obsessed with the axoloti in a local aquarium that he himself transforms into one. He enters the aquarium due to his boredom with everyday life, as defined by the panthers and lions he would otherwise go see. An axolotl is a type of Mexican salamander that does not undergo metamorphosis, so it remains in its larval state for the rest of its life. Gills remain attached to the side of an axolotl's face, and deep penetrating eyes set themselves in their ghost-like transparent faces.
Axolotl presents a boy, but gives no information as to where he lives, his family, or anything significant in his life. The information given - he currently roams about Paris, and is an inquisitive and curious being - says nothing about how he externalizes himself in society. After the first time he sees the axoloti, he seeks more information and comes upon them up in an dictionary at the local library. He discovers that "specimens of them had been found in Africa capable of living on dry land during the periods of drought, and counting their life under water when the rainy season came" (161). This phrase foreshadows the deep empathy the boy will feel for the lonely axoloti later, which creates the mood of the piece. The reader relates to the boy's curiosity, which sparks a connection and interest in the story.
Sartre writes that, the past of a human being is irrelevant, because a human can always change who they are. Cortarzar does not take the time to compose the boy's background because it does not matter: he creates a character as an example to explain Sartre's thought. No matter who or what the boy is, the capability to reconstruct his life in any manner he means to will not elude him, for he is human. It just so happens that he physically reconstructs his life into that of an odd-looking salamander. To further emphasize this point, Cortarzar at first conceives the notion in the boy's head that the axoltols have some secret agenda, some romantic idea, to "abolish space and time with an indifferent immobility" - he learns later that they just simply exist, and that their existence is not as romantic as he once thought (162). The conscious decision to change his mind about the axolotls renders his previous thoughts, his previous history with the axoloti, irrelevant.
The idea that a human being paints his own portrait of himself by his actions, encompasses a large portion of Sartre's work. In Axolotl, the boy returns time and time again to observe the axoloti. "It got to the point that I was going everyday, and at night I thought of them immobile in the darkness, slowly putting a hand out which immediatley encountered another" (163). He lies awake at night, and contemplates their existance. He ponders their situation, wondering if their reality is one giant blur of life, "Perhaps their eyes could see in the dead of night, and for them they day continued indefinitely. The eyes of axolotls have no lids" (163). As each day passes, the boy becomes more and more obsessed and repeats his dismal actions. During the last day of his humanity, he realizes the truth of the axoloti's reality. His empathy then overcomes him, envelops him, buries him alive in the body of an axolotl. He is no longer human: he transforms into an axolotl. "No transition and no surprise, I saw my face against the glass, I saw it on the outside of the tank, I saw it on the other side of the glass. Then my face drew back and I understood" (164). Cortarzar defines the boy's actions clearly so that the reader may absorb Sartre's concept. Existance preceeds essence - the boy transforms into an axolotl because he acts like an axolotl, not because he defines himself as one. He acts in the same way, over and over again, mindlessly, he concentrates only on them. The axoloti imprison his brain. They become his reality, and he becomes them. If, in his mind, he defined himself as an axolotl, he would only be deceiving himself. He would not truly be an axolotl, but a human being who believes he is an axolotl.
Sartre claims that the freedom to choose is a defining trait of humanity. He rejects determinism - each human being is not set on a determined path because they have a choice in how to respond to naturally determining factors. Humans have the ability to change their lives. When the boy becomes an axolotl, he loses his humanity; he loses his freedom to choose. "The horror began - I learned in the same moment - of believing myself prisoner in the body of an axolotl, metamorphosed into him with my human mind intact, buried alive in an axoltl, condemned to move lucidly among unconscious creatures" (164). He cannot choose to be outside of the aquarium tank; he cannot even choose where to sit in the tank, the other axoloti fill in the remaining minuscule space. "But that stopped when just a foot grazed my face, when I moved just a little to one side and saw an axoltol next to me who was looking at me, and understood that he know also, no communication possibly, but very clearly" (164). Cortarzar employs the boy's thoughts again to demonstrate Sartre's concept. Without the freedom to choose, humans lose their identity as humans because they can no longer define themselves through their chosen actions.
In the story, the boy relates the axoloti to humans. He feels as if he can connect with the axolotl, even if they relate to him as remotely as a present-day monkey does. He notices this feeling instantaneously, "There's nothing strange in this, because after the first minute I knew that we were linked, that something infinitely lost and distant kept pulling us together" (161). For some reason, he senses the humanity in these animals, but finds himself incapable of an explanation for his feelings. He describes their faces as being Aztec-like, their feet as "ending in tiny fingers with minutely human nails," and their eyes as having the ability to look and know (162-163). He even goes as far as to say, "They are not animals" (163). If not animals, what? The boy develops a deep empathy for the axolotl, as he would with other human beings, because he feels so closely related to them. "I caught myself mumbling words of advice, conveying childish hopes. They were not human beings, but I had found in no animal such a profound relation with myself" (163).
Axolotl touches upon Sartre's idea that humans should be treated as subjects, not objects. They should look further than the roles society gives them, and find themselves. The axoloti remain caged and cramped in their dreary reality, and since the axoloti and humans correlate in this story, the boy feels even more empathy for them. He feels as if they are being treated as merely objects, not as the living, breathing, thinking creatures they are to him. The world views them gilled salamanders in a tank, there for viewing pleasure. The idea that the axoloti may have conscience thought escapes the world. When the boy transforms he feels his own conscience, "I am an axolotl for good now, and if I think like a man it's only because every axolotl thinks like a man inside his rosy stone semblance" (164-165). He feels as if the axolotl think like he does, because they endure the same reality.
As his obsession progresses, the boy mentions the encasing glass more frequently. In his narrative, he uses the phrases, "against the glass" and "the other side of the glass," and by doing so, he unconsciously notes the separation between he and the axoloti. This separation, he realizes, is not merely just, but is also a confinement for the creatures. Through this analogy, Cortarzar draws a conclusion about the human condition as defined by Sartre. The axolotl are imprisoned in their aquatic cell; humans are imprisoned on Earth. They must all work and die together, no matter their historical background or role. Not one can escape the condition set to them. The boy forms this bond with the axolotl because though he is unaware, he shares the same fate that they do. Once he becomes an axolotl, he realizes his condition, and despairs - he knows that there is nothing he can do to change his condition. "Only one thing was strange: to go on thinking as usual, to know. To realize that was, for the first moment, like the horror of a man buried alive awaking to his fate" (164).
Sartre address the idea of despair. He says that, humans naturally limit themselves to think about only the things they can control in their lives, and when they realize that they cannot control some things that are very important to them, they find themselves in anguish and despair. The axolotls realized their fate, and now wait, for that is all they can do, until their situation changes. "They were lying in wait for something, a remote dominion destroyed, an age of liberty when the world had been that of the axolots. Not possible that such a terrible expression which was attaining the overthrow of that forced blankness on their stone faces should carry any message other than one of pain, proof of that eternal sentence, of that liquid hell they were undergoing." (164). Once the boy realizes that the axolotls are aware of their situation, he cannot help but feel more empathy for them. "They were suffering, every fiber of my body reached toward that stifled pain" (164). He longs for them to be free, as he is, but as he obsesses more and more, he relinquishes his freedom, and becomes more like the prisoners he attempts to empathize with.
The boy in the story describes the axolotol's eyes in great detail. "And then I discovered its eyes, its face. Inexpressive features, with no other trait save the eyes, two orifices, like brooches, wholly of transparent gold, lacking any life but looking" (162). They mystify him. He cannot fully understand anything taking place behind those perplexing eyes. Once he becomes an axolotl, he acquires the mindset to be able to comprehend their plight. He attains another form of sight, and he can never return to the way he once was. Existentialism introduced the world to another way of thinking and seeing. Once its ideas ran through the mainstream public, many lives were changed, and many eyes opened to a new form of vision.
One can see only his reality, and his reality differentiates from every other being's. The tank encloses the limit of the axoloti's reality. Because there is nothing but the tank and one another - the axoloti evolved into creatures so numb to their reality that they fail to acknowledge each other, or anything else. "It was useless to tap with one finger on the glass directly in front of their faces; they never gave the least reaction" (162-163). Trapped in the abyss of their own worlds, the axoloti relate to humans, forever burdened by the human condition.
The beginning and end of this piece tie one to another and create a continuous cycle. A typical story opens with such a line as, "There was a time when I thought a great deal about the axolotls" (161). It prepares the reader for what is to come in the following text. The end of Axolotl, "And in this final solitude to which he no longer comes, I console myself by thinking that perhaps he is going to write a story about us, that, believing he's making up a story, he's going to write all this about axolotls" brings the story around to the first line - an introduction to a story about axoltols (165). The reader feels trapped in this cycle, in the sphere of the story. The form duplicates the story: a boy finds something that interests him, he obsesses over it, and eventually becomes it. His thoughts alter from that of a free boy to an axolotl confined to a small space and bleak reality - a reality that is as horrible as being buried alive. The piece itself is quite perplexing, and entices the reader into thinking about what took place in the few pages read. Axolotl is a warns against feeling too much empathy; it is a cautionary tale. Too much empathy will overcome a person because understanding another being to the fullest extent is impossible. Even though the boy puts himself into the same situation as the axoloti, he cannot understand completely what each and every one feels about their situation, because they cannot fully communicate. This relates to the idea of the human condition in the sense that one human, even in the same situation, cannot feel the same exact way as another; one axolotl, even in the same situation, cannot feel the same exact way as another. They are the same, yet different, because their actions have defined who they are in the world, and no person save the individual himself can understand one's thoughts and experiences.
