Point of View

The story's narration blurs the line between reality and fantasy. The story is narrated by a first-person narrator, some part of whose consciousness or physical being is transformed into an axolotl. This creates considerable ambiguity, because the "I" and "me" of the narrator may at any point refer to the man before the transformation or to his axolotl-self who is telling the story. The musings of the first are juxtaposed with the insights of the second. While the ambiguous "I" emphasizes the connection between the man and the axolotl, the two contrasting points of view that it represents also serves to highlight the division between the man who remains outside the tank and that part of his consciousness that migrates into the tank. The reader's need to follow the continual shifts between the two viewpoints may also be said to mirror the protagonist's own shift from...