Talk:Axolotl

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This species is the star of a short story by Julio Cortázar. "Axolotl," published in 1952 in Spanish, is about a young man who spends a lot of time observing an aquarium full of axolotls at a garden in Paris.

He is a writer and imagines the aquatic salamanders have more intellectual freedom than he does. They have the luxury to sit in their tank all day and ponder. He observes them almost every day and becomes obsessed.

He emphasizes their halted development. They are neither mature land dwellers nor squirmy little tadpoles -- they're between two stages. He also attaches importance to the little design on their heads. I think he describes it as an "Aztec" symbol.

Then the narration shifts dramatically.

I'm not going to spoil what happens but the writer does end up learning that he has no way of understanding how "the other" thinks or lives without experiencing life on the other side of the glass tank. He realizes he has just been projecting ideas onto these creatures that cannot express themselves to prove their observers wrong. As a writer, self-expression is vital to him.

It's a really fascinating story -- in Spanish and English.

There's an English version here: http://www.cis.vt.edu/modernworld/d/axolotl.html