Reedy is a professor at the University of Kentucky In the following excerpt, he presents his views on the mythic structure of "Axolotl," focusing on its theme of rebirth.

One of the threads common to the fabric of Rayuela [Hopscotch] and several of Cortazar's short stones is the looking-glass image which functions symbolically as the aperture through which the author reveals a recurrent mythic process involving many of his characters. These moments of revelation, which allow the perception of the essential nature of something or the intuitive grasp of a hidden reality, are akin to [James] Joyce's epiphanies which have been described as 'the single word that tells the whole story ... the simple gesture that reveals a complex set of relationships. What seem trivial details to others may be portentous symbols to him'

In one of the Expendable Chapters of Rayuela, Cortazar's alter ego, Morelli, describes the...