Hopscotch Themes & Symbolism

Hopscotch Significant Topics

Hopscotch is a novel with an appreciable and central theme: Horacio Oliveira's quest to experience a wholeness founded on truth. His goal is to touch truth directly without the aid of intellectual concepts or philosophical language. Hopscotch is a child's activity in which the player attempts to reach the final goal (heaven) by successfully kicking an object from one square to the next. Cortazar transforms this simple children's game into a literary one.

The point of Cortazar's game is that no amount of intellectual theorizing will ever lead to true peace. One must act.

The first part (From the Other Side) describes the bohemian life of Horacio Oliveira, an Argentinean intellectual living in Paris. From its opening sentence where he asks himself if he would ever find La Maga (an Uruguayan woman living in Paris with her baby, Rocamadour), Hopscotch focuses on the theme of searching....
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