"Blow-Up" Assignment

1. There is a contrast in perspective. The author switches between first, second, and third person points of view.

2. Three examples of how this contrast is set up:

a. “It’ll never be known how this has to be told, in the first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continually inventing modes that will serve for nothing. If one might say: I will see the moon rose, or: we hurt me at the back of my eyes, and especially: you the blond woman was the clouds that race before my your his our yours their faces. What the hell (Cortazar 114).”

b. “Oh, doctor, every time I take a breath . . . Always tell it, always get rid of that tickle in the stomach that bothers you. And now that we’re finally going to tell it, let’s put things a little bit in order, we’d be walking down the staircase in this house as far as Sunday, November 7, just a month back. One goes down five floors and stands then in the Sunday in the sun one would not have suspected of Paris in November, with a large appetite to walk around, to see things, to take photos (because we were photographers, I’m a photographer) (Cortazar 116).”

c. “Out of breath, I stood in front of them; no need to step closer, the game was played out. Of the woman you could see just maybe a shoulder and a bit of the hair, brutally cut off by the frame of the picture; but the man was directly center, his mouth half open, you could see a shaking black tongue, and he lifted his hands slowly, bringing them into the foreground, an instant still in perfect focus, and then all of him a lump that blotted out the island, the tree, and I shut my eyes, I didn’t want to see any more, and I covered my face and broke into tears like an idiot (Cortazar 131).”

3. By changing the perspective between first, second, and third person in “Blow-Up,” Cortazar aims to capture many different viewpoints of the story in order to explain it in a more meaningful and comprehensive manner, much like a series of photographs evokes a more complete understanding of an experience through multiple angles.