THE AVATAR IN PANAMA - Theses - Flinders University

3.1 Shoes and Mirrors: Images of Doubling The Avatar in PanamaThe employment of the mirror as a major leitmotif is its principal rolealthough it also appears as a minor theme, an incidental image, and issubstituted by alternative reflective surfaces in many other stories. 5Upon Reflection: Mirror ImagesThe mirror has no image of its own and in order to serve as amirror, it must possess a reflecting surface. This dependence on thereflection of the material object was typically seen as a fault. Just likethe double, the reflection has a symbiotic relationship with the original.The mirror’s inability to select what it reflects, its passivity and theevanescence of the mirror image is a metaphor for the transience of lifeas the reflection only lasts as long as the object remains in front of itand the human observer is looking at it. Historically, the mirrorepitomises the ephemeral and fleeting. This very attribute of itstransience makes the mirror an image used in postmodern writing also.The mirror image caused by the reflection shows two things; both themirror itself and the thing with which the mirror is confronted: the imageor copy of the original. If the images presented to the reflecting surfacewere fixed it would cease to be a mirror as it could no longer reflect thenew original. Since the reflection does not affect the original, it can bemirrored consecutively and simultaneously as often as one likesdepending on how many mirrors are available. As the mirror imagerelies on reflection, there can also be a mirror image of a mirror image,an infinite series of reflections of the reflection of a single original. 6 Thispossibility of multiplied images has implications for the mirror as apalimpsest and for a postmodern interpretation of the reflected double.As it is only through reflections that one’s face is seen, themirror is a vital instrument used to inspect, adjust, correct, orcosmetically disguise one’s appearance. This function was a sign ofvanity or contemplation of the self and they soon became instruments ofnarcissism. However, it is also an unreliable ally as, “the mirror alsosuggests that we are necessarily in a passive state, since we can neverreally see ourselves; we can only be seen”. 7 Without a mirror the self asa whole unit is invisible; with one, people simultaneously seethemselves and how others perceive them. They are in theory seeingopposing views at once yet reflection and original are somewhatsynchronised.Herbert Grabes distinguishes four basic classifications of whatis shown in the mirror. It may reflect things as they are, the present, asit does in Jaramillo Levi's “Testigo”; as a magic mirror it might5 Several of which are found in 2.3 Dolls and Dummies: Felisberto Hernández 131.6 Grabes 111-113.7Massey 80.163