Cortazar La Noche Boca Arriba
English translations of all stories and poems for the AP Spanish Literature course and exam. La Noche Boca Arriba La Noche Boca Arriba Julio Cortazar. Start studying La noche boca arriba: questions. Learn vocabulary, terms, and more with flashcards, games, and other study tools. “La Noche Boca Arriba-Night Face Up” by Julio Cortazar Posted on August 27, 2015 August 27, 2015 by justinjjlin Julio Cortazar engages the reader in an interplay between reality and fiction in his short story “Night Face Up”, bringing the reader into his fantastic dreamscape through the use of rich imagery and the presence of. La Viuda de Montiel; La Prodiosa Tarde de Baltazar; Un dia de estos; Dos Palabras; El ahogado mas hermoso del mundo; El alacran de fray gomez; Las medias rojas; Un senor muy viejo con unas alas enormes; La siesta del martes; Chac Mool; La noche boca arriba; La continuidad de los parques; La muerte y la brujula; El sur; Adios cordera; No oyes. Essay on La Noche Boca Arriba Translation L A NOCHE BOCA ARRIBA Halfway down the long hotel vestibule, he thought that probably hewas going to be late, and hurried on into the street to get out.
La Noche Boca Arriba English Version
Julio Cortazar engages the reader in an interplay between reality and fiction in his short story “Night Face Up”, bringing the reader into his fantastic dreamscape through the use of rich imagery and the presence of uncertainty in the plot events. The ambiguous nature with which he presents the events in the story illustrate the natural intermix of dreams and reality within the human mind, and the oftentimes difficult act of distinguishing between the two realms.
At the beginning, Cortazar frames his story in the modern era, creating a world in which the narrator is exposed to modern sensations such as the “cool wind [whipping] his pantlegs” as he rode on his motorcycle. The vivid imagery continues to engage the reader with synesthesia, drawing the reader into the story with descriptions of numerous senses and creating a subtle fantastic element to the story. The catalyst for the events later in the story happens when the narrator, still on his motorcycle, begins to disengage from the modern world as he is caught up in the euphoria he experiences from his motorcycle ride and “allowed himself to be carried away by the freshness, by the weightless contraction [and his own] involuntary relaxation”, which subsequently causes him to crash and sends him paralyzed to the hospital. This event can be interpreted as the first evidence for the narrator’s own distortion of the dreamscape and reality. In his act of momentary “involuntary relaxation”, he foreshadows his future struggle to discriminate between what is real and what merely exists in his imagination. Fantastic elements continue to come into play while the narrator is in the hospital, for through his firsthand account the audience begins to see a dreamy and vague ebb and flow between what is supposedly the real world, the hospital, and the fictitious dream world, in which the narrator finds himself transported through time to the time of the Aztecs, in the middle of a “war of the blossoms”.
As the ebb and flow between reality and dreams becomes increasingly ambiguous, the dream world begins to seem more realistic than the ‘reality’ of the modern world, as the narrator begins to describe the Aztec world with increasingly vivid and sensuous imagery. The narrator even acknowledges the uncanny nature of the dream, stating that it was “unusual as a dream because it was full of smells, and he never dreamt smells”. Cortazor continues to manipulate the audience through continuous shifts back to the modern world; descriptions of the lush Aztec marshes are interspersed, or interrupted, with momentary returns to the hospital as the narrator receives medical attention or nourishment, before soon drifting back into the dreamscape. The last clear acknowledgement of reality comes with the narrator’s fears of hopelessness, as fantastic elements come into play once again with the sensation of being “staked to the ground on a floor of dank, ice cold slabs”, the ground being the hospital floor. With the temple scenes and the ceremonial execution ritual taking place, the narrator comes to terms with his inevitable death at the hands of the Aztecs, while seemingly coming to terms with the true dreamscape, that of the modern world.
Though the story is mostly driven by events which purportedly happen within the narrator’s head, the uncertain nature of reality versus the dreamscape highlights the fantastic qualities of the story. As the story progresses, the interplay within the narrator’s mind helps elucidate the events which are happening in the Aztec world versus the modern world, while leaving the question of true reality up to interpretation. Cortazar skillfully juxtaposes these two realms, and in doing so, creates a fantastic-marvelous story, as throughout the story there is uncertainty between the two worlds within the story. As the story progresses, the uncertainty only grows; numerous parallels are drawn between the two worlds. A central theme linking the story and the worlds lies within the title, in the concept of the night “face up”, where the narrator is “face up” in the hospital as well as in his procession through the temple pyramids in the Aztec world. Further parallels exist, such as in the lights and odors in the hospital are compared to the light of the Aztec fires and the “smell of war”, as well as the harnesses holding him in his bed versus the ropes binding him to his captors, and finally in the surgical procedure in the hospital and the sacrificial scene at the end of the story with the priest with “knife in hand”. In the end, the “infinite lie of the dream” leaves the reader with a clear resolution but no clear answer as to what realm the narrator and the story existed in.