THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

2.3 Dobles and Duplos: Latin American Perspectives The Avatar in Panamaponder whether the sedentary character is real, reincarnated,replicated, a past or future projection, or poured into another’s body.Cortázar's writing regularly merges the fictional and the real, orthe desired or imagined, and the real. The use of the mise-en-abîmeeffect is apparent in “Continuidad de los parques” in which theprotagonist-reader unwittingly becomes part of the fictional world inwhich he is indulging. 14 He is at once aware of his immediatesurroundings but also of his immersion into the story: “Gozaba delplacer casi perverso de irse desgajando línea a línea de lo querodeaba, y sentir a la vez que su cabeza descansaba cómodamente enel terciopelo del alto respaldo”. 15Dusk begins to fall in both “Continuidad de los parques”, and inthe narrative of the protagonist-reader who gradually becomesdisconnected from the reality around him: “Palabra a palabra absorbidapor la sórdida disyuntiva de los héroes, dejándose ir hacia lasimágenes que se concertaban y adquirían color y movimiento”. Fromthe point in both Cortázar’s and the protagonist-reader’s text where itreads: “fue testigo del último encuentro en la cabaña del monte”,Cortázar’s central character, becomes involved in the plot of the text heis reading (9). Ostensibly, fate is beyond his control: “se sentía que todoestaba decidido desde siempre” (10). As the external reader followsCortázar’s text, the description of the room seems familiar and, knife inhand, the text’s murderer sees the decisive “alto respaldo de un sillónde terciopelo verde, la cabeza del hombre en el sillón leyendo unanovela” (11). The external reader is about to be made a witness to themurder of Cortázar’s protagonist-reader who is about to read of thetext’s character’s murder and therefore experience his own, as theprotagonist-reader has become doubled as the central character of“Continuidad de los parques”, and of the unnamed narrative that thecharacter happens to read. Reality and fiction become a confusion ofliterary planes and the novel’s plot is reproduced like a reflection.“La isla a mediodía” is a mysterious story, which seems to linkMarini’s fantasy or imagined life as an inhabitant of a Greek island withhis reality as an airline steward who first sees the island from the plane.It then becomes his obsession, to the exclusion of everything else. 16Nothing else matters as Marini’s reality becomes ill defined:14 The “Chinese box” effect of mise-en-abîme often suggests an infinite regress, i.e. anendless succession of internal duplications. Chris Baldick, Oxford Concise Dictionaryof Literary Terms. 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford U P, 2001) 158.15Cortázar, “Continuidad de los parques”, Final de juego 9.16 Cortázar, “La isla a mediodia”, Todos los fuegos el fuego 117-127.120