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Short Story The Night Face Up By Jose Cortazar

Decent Essays

The Night Face Up by Jose Cortazar is a vivid short story because it transposes the main character's dream and reality. The initial reading for this passage was quite confusing because of the lucid intervals of reality and the dream that the main character was in. It can be seen through Cortzar's use of symbolism, foreshadowing, and style-of-writing that helps the reader better understand the story. Through this text, the reader can understand the fast emotions that the character feels and what to expect next in the short story. To start off, there is a continuous symbolism in the short story which comes in the form of the Patient that the main character will wake up next to in the hospital. The reason why the Patient serves as a major symbol in the story is because every time the main character wakes up the Patient helps to calm him down. In the same way, if two people were kidnapped and one of the captives goes through a mental breakdown whereas the other is there and is trying to help the situation. For example when the main character is having a fit and it's the Patient saying "You're going to fall of the bed...old buddy." Cortazar may have created the Patient a symbolism of duty and trust, based on the real-life soldiers who trust each other till the very end. The Patient may …show more content…

Going back to foreshadowing the line "it'd be worse out in the street" to being an unknown region and hiding Cortazar sprinkles awareness of how the main character will deal with the problem in the future. Through this type of foreshadowing it helps the reader easily understand what to expect without being

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