User:Danielagonzalezo8/sandbox

Story Analysis
Continuity of Parks is a short story written by Julio Cortázar, and as Lauro Zavala once said «simually the fiction and meta-fiction most studied in the history of literature» In reality and fiction a story intertwine. The structure of the story is broken when one of the characters of the novella introduces himself in reality, creating an effect of Chinese boxes. «"Continuity of Parks" is manifested, in the last term, as paradigm in the "open work" susceptible of multiple passages.»3

The author of the novella is an ironic adaptation of Cortazar's passive reader, who he calls «female-reader», he establishes that «he does not want problems but solutions, or false problems that allow others to suffer comfortably sitting in his chair, without committing himself to the drama that should also be his» At the end of the story the drama of which he does not want to be a part of is his own».

The name of the story refers to the fact that it contains three context of the story or reality plans, to which are identified as "parks". The first is in which the author is immersed in reality. The second one is in which the reader reads at the beginning of the story, and the third is the environment in which the story elapses in the short story that is read by the character in the story.

The story is divided in paragraphs of 380 & 170 words. The first paragraph contains small amount of information while the second one provides excess information, that constitutes a case of paralysis. There are several allusions that parody the police story, both in its rules and in its logic.

The story begins introducing us into the world of an occasional reader who evades the routine through reading. The landowner flees from his businesses taking refuge in his study to read. This space is not accidental: everything is organized and closed to the outside. The novel has the style of simple plot and realistic characters that the reader-female likes and that Cortázar rejects. The final scene shows two lovers in a cabin planning a murder, creating a disturbing atmosphere in the story within the story. The actions of the fictitious reader are described with verbs, nouns and adverbs that transmit passivity (rest, armchair, sprawl, etc.) while the reality of the lovers describe a tense situation and contrasts (blood, kisses, dagger, etc.) that end up inviting aggression (reject, destroy, etc).

The text presents a labyrinthine temporal succession. The real reader begins reading while being innocent as is the character. The closer to the end of the novel and the story respectively, both readers feel that something terrible will happen. In the last paragraph the reader-character becomes a victim and the real reader becomes guilty for imagining the death of the character. The lack of closure of the story for not having read the novel makes the end disappear, evidencing the guilt of the real reader, who has become victimized or accomplice of the death of the character while watching the crime. But it is also a double crime, since the real reader is also a real victim because the end of the story has disappeared, at the same time that he is an imaginary victim by his own imagination. This conclusion multiplies the doubts instead of revealing the mystery. When the character reader dies, the two realities are confused. This death represents the end of «literature as an object of consumption». This story represents an example of Mise en abyme.5

Plot
The story begins with a wealthy businessman reading a novel he had started reading a few days earlier in his house on a large estate. He had been sidetracked by business matters and had not had enough time to finish the novel. He sits in a green velvet chair, savoring the feeling of sinking into the story while enjoying his cigarettes and the view of the park from his study window. In his novel, a man and woman, two lovers, meet.

The novel is about a couple of lovers who are in a cabin, he has a wound on the face by a branch, she is waiting for him. She wants to caress him but he rejects her because they have premeditated the meeting to plan how they were going to kill someone. They look for alibis and eliminate possible errors. Nightfall is approaching. They have plotted the murder of the woman’s husband with a dagger. The woman goes north, and the man goes to her house. Armed with the dagger, the man goes inside the house and sees his victim: a man who’s sitting in a green velvet armchair reading a novel.[1][2].

At that moment the (real) reader realizes that the man in the chair is the victim of the protagonist of the novel. In the story are two joined stories: The man who reads the novel and the lovers who are going to kill the husband.