‘‘End of the Game’’is a story about the end of childhood innocence and thereby an end to the rich imaginative, colorful world that the children live in. The reader meets the characters, Letitia, Holanda, and the Narrator as they are in transition between living almost exclusively in their childhood world of fantasy and having to…
Tag: End of the Game
End of the Game – Setting
When ‘‘End of the Game’’ was published, Cortazar lived in Paris, where he enjoyed a rich cultural life among other writers and artists. He had left his native Argentina in 1951, five years after Juan Domingo Peron became president of Argentina for the first time. In 1944, while Cortazar was teaching at the University of…
End of the Game – Literary Devices
First-Person Point of View: Nameless Narrator Cortazar makes a strategic decision when he writes ‘‘End of the Game’’ in the first-person point of view. A first-person narrator tells no more than he or she knows—and in fact, in this story there are many things the reader never learns, such as what Letitia writes in her…
End of the Game – Themes
Envy and Guilt The nameless Narrator in ‘‘End of the Game’’ is envious of Letitia and, at the same time feels terribly guilty for her envy. She envies Letitia’s special privileges: The Narrator also is envious when it becomes clear that Ariel prefers Letitia. This envy is complicated because the Narrator envies a disabled girl…
End of the Game – Characters
Ariel Ariel, a young man who attends an Industrial High School, passes on the 2:08 train every afternoon. He sees the three girls each day in their poses and begins to throw them notes from the train. Ariel says that he likes the Statues. Soon he lets them know that he is transfixed by Letitia….
End of the Game – Summary
‘‘End of the Game’’ is the story of three adolescent girls and a fantasy game they play in a field behind their house in full view of the Argentine Central Train Track. The girls, Letitia, Holanda, and the Narrator, live with Mama and Aunt Ruth, two disciplinarians who seem always to be disapproving of the…