| Sumario: | This article examines the depiction of adolescence in the stories written by Julio Cortázar. One of the most persistently persuasive sides of Cortázar is his ability to slough off, or at least to subvert, the conventional behavior of adults, portraying it as little more than a set of received routines whose features, in themselves no better or worse than others that might have been, are simply arbitrary sometimes preposterous, frequently inhibiting. Arguably, a key example of this world-view is to be found in the story Las fases de Severo in the book, Octaedro. Many of Cortázar's stories cast doubt on the idea that our world can be accounted for in terms of reason, of cause and effect. The theme of adolescence related to sexual and emotional maturity becomes apparent in Cortázar's story Deshoras, where he traces the beginnings of love. Overall, there seems to be an evolution of style, the product of a persistent quest for a narrative which will prove adequate for the subject in hand. Las babas del diablo begins with the narrator pondering how he might approach the task of telling, whether by using the first or second person or the third-person plural, or by inventing some new device which might fail. When Cortázar takes up the topic of adolescence again, in Todos los fuegos, el fuego, it has by then become the central thematic focus of a story noticeably and unusually free of fantasy, concerned above all with psychology.
|
|---|