Italo Calvino's Under the Jaguar Sun is almost entirely based on a foundation of three essential themes, all of which are linked in one way or another other to the sensation of taste. While Calvino creates many antitheses, the dissonances actually transform into wonderful resolutions. This specifically applies to the narrator's transformation from start to finish and through Mexican cuisine. He emphasizes the necessity of reciprocity in the tradition of human sacrifice and cannibalism (each was potentially sacrificer and victim) – and that reciprocity is the main (if not the only) reason why this practice has persisted. Finally, he establishes the principles of the ouroboros, arguing that life must feed on other life in order to live. Calvino weaves these three themes into a harmonious core for his overall theme of taste and digestion, establishing ritual cannibalism not as repulsive, but rather unifying and intimate. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay. Calvino uses many antitheses throughout Under the Jaguar Sun, and they indeed seem to provide the strongest foundation for all his other themes. From the second sentence, the reader is already struck by an antithesis: the hotel (which is considered largely secular) was once the convent of Santa Catalina (which is sacred). This transformation from religious to secular reappears in a scene near the very end of the story, in which the narrator and Olivia (who, although not with absolute certainty, appears to be his wife) strike the chacmool pose. While the original chacmool would have held a tray to hold the divine offerings of human hearts for the gods, the narrator and Olivia have on their laps a "tray with the anonymous hotel breakfast" (Calvino 27), which is far from divine. However, they still attempt to hide the "subtle messages of roughness and acidity" (Calvino 27) with sweet pulps, not unlike what Salustiano Velazco thought the Aztecs might have done with the flesh human. Perhaps this scene also symbolizes the narrator and Olivia's understanding or growth in Mexican culture. This growth extends from the beginning to the end of the play and is distinctly manifested in the narrator as he transforms, so to speak, from someone who tends to “define experiences verbally and conceptually” (Calvino 11 ), with heavy emphasis on the words. usage and diction, to one who becomes a part of nature as a whole - an experience that words cannot adequately describe. His transformation is probably the most important of all Calvino's antitheses. This unfolds throughout the passage, and most of the other antitheses derive from the narrator's transformative experiences. For example, the narrator's recurring experiences with Mexican cuisine highlight one of Calvino's most important antitheses that harmonizes into a cohesive blend—and that cuisine itself is the product of Mexico's own blending heritage . “The calendars of ancient Mexican civilizations, engraved on reliefs, represent a cyclical and tragic conception of time” (Calvino 13), and indeed, “time was not an empty and abstract measure for the Aztecs, but rather something something concrete, a force, substance or fluid perpetually exhausted” (Paz 93). However, although Octavio Paz states that "one period ended and another returned" (Paz 94), "perhaps the peoples that history defines as the successive occupants of these territories were not only one people” (Calvino13). Perhaps each cycle of ancient Mexican civilizations was not completely separate from one another, but rather they all contributed to the early stages of an "elaborate and daring cuisine" (Calvino 5), which took place “where the two civilizations [America and Spain” ] had merged, or perhaps where the vanquished had triumphed” (Calvino 7). And just as the "different traditions and cultural heritages mixed together and eventually became one" (Paz 91), various flavors of his cuisine were also brought together into a remarkable blend, which the narrator describes repeatedly during his experiences in Mexico : his chilis en nogada “swim in a nut sauce whose harshness and bitter aftertaste were drowned in a creamy and sweet abandon” (Calvino 5), his “crispy tortillas […] plunged like spoons into [ ...] the fatty sweetness of the aguacate", and "the cabrito [...] caused surprise, because the teeth first encountered a crispy piece, then a piece that melted in the mouth" (Calvino 23) - for n' to name just a few. As he traveled “from one locality to another, the gastronomic lexicon varied, always offering new elements to record and new sensations to define” (Calvino 8). Each new menu symbolizes - literally and figuratively - a new experience that brings it closer to the experience lived at the heart of Mexican culture. Before being ingested by a menu, however, the original temperaments of Olivia and the narrator can be captured through the painting of the young nun and the old priest, as it depicts a situation almost opposite to the one in which they find themselves at the time: while the nun and the priest love each other desperately but cannot seem to reach each other, "the physical bond between Olivia and [the narrator] was going through a phase of rarefaction" (Calvino 10), which means that they had the ability to come together but didn't really want to. As a couple, they contrast with the couple in the painting. Yet they also display different thought processes among themselves regarding the painting: he is very concerned about the slight nuances in the exact words of the painting's caption (such as his careful distinction between three different words for "love"), while she, although interested in the painting, also seems almost impatient to move forward, “to eat chilis en nogada” (Calvino 4). So, Olivia is the first to want to really experience Mexico. It is therefore normal that she was immediately curious and interested in the ancient practice of human sacrifice and Aztec cannibalism, wondering on several occasions "what [was done] with the bodies of the victims afterwards" (Calvino 15). And, as might be expected, the narrator “could not explain his insistence” (Calvino 15). Although at first glance this is mostly unnoticed, Calvino also sneaks in some synaesthesia, that is, he produces other sensations (especially taste) through his descriptions of sounds - all throughout Under the Jaguar Sun. These synesthesias create an underlying tone so that taste experiences are exercised “on the receptivity of all the senses” (Calvino 5). The most obvious example of this is cuisine which vibrates "the highest notes of flavors, juxtaposing them in modulations, in agreements and especially in dissonances" (Calvino 5), but other intriguing examples can be discovered by examining closer look at the piece, including one that can be compared to the harmonization of flavors: the orchestra that played for "the multicolored tourists in shirtsleeves" (Calvino 21) both old and young - merging them all together as if they were the same, neither old nor young. So, just like the flavorsharmonize in agreements, different people harmonize into one culture. As another example, tea tasting was largely a “spectacular acoustic event […] [consisting of] the clinks of cups, spoons, and knives cutting slices of cake” (Calvino 17), which are widely attributed to the sensation of taste. even if the description itself is sound. However, because the narrator himself does not taste it, the noises are represented as collisions rather than chords, because he is not attuned to the flavors. Interestingly, although the amazing mix of flavors in Mexican dishes amazes the narrator, he does not. It doesn't seem to start moving toward experience until almost halfway through the story. The turning point, one could say, was when he “realized that [his] gaze rested not on [Olivia’s] eyes but on her teeth, […] which [he] saw for the first time not like the radiant shine of a smile but like the instruments most adapted to their objective: to sink into flesh, to cut it, tear it” (Calvino 16). From then on, it seemed, it became increasingly difficult for him to maintain his attention to detail; it must rely more on experiences. For example, when Salustiano converses with them on the terrace before snack, “the archaeological and ethnographic details [that the narrator] would have very much liked to hear sentence by sentence, […] were lost in the reverberations of the party. » (Calvino 18). How fitting that the feast makes “the highest notes of flavors vibrate, juxtaposing them in modulations, in accords and above all in dissonances which would assert themselves as an incomparable experience” (Calvino 5), which drowns the narrator's once precious story . words and details! Furthermore, when “[Salustiano] spoke of human sacrifices” (Calvino 18) – which more directly concerns cultural experience – “his words now more easily overcame the sound barrier that separated [them]” (Calvino 19), despite their increased softness. The narrator's transformation is certainly largely the cause of such a paradox. However, while it is clear that the narrator is on the right track in his transformation, there is some evidence to suggest that it is still incomplete. On the one hand, the narrator imagines Olivia eating him, a "relationship that, in [his] imaginations, [he] thought matched Olivia's deepest desires" (Calvino 24), but she apparently found him “bland” (Calvino 25), or tasteless. Thus, he believes that “Mexican cuisine, with all its daring and imagination, was necessary for Olivia to be able to feed on [him] with satisfaction” (Calvino 25) – a conclusion which obviously highlights his need to taste more of the Mexico, and in fact to adopt some of the harmonic flavor of Mexico to disguise its own blandness. His old self would have been too preoccupied with details and words to realize this. Moreover, even after having stayed in Mexico for a long time, the narrator continues to attach great importance to the information he can find in reading – as when he reads that the chacmool was a “messenger of the gods […] in a guide” (Calvino 25). But he continued further, asking intelligent questions that would only have occurred to him by experiencing and understanding ancient culture – not by simply regurgitating the words of a guidebook. In conclusion, the narrator is gradually absorbed into Mexican culture. And as such, the pinnacle of the narrator's experience can be described through his desire to taste human flesh (this is his final "menu item", in regards to my previous statement that every new one menu brings a new experience), which reflectsobviously the ancient Aztec traditions. This need to experience cannibalism (in the metaphorical sense) leads to Calvino's next theme: the need for reciprocity. Even though the narrator imagined "the sensation of [Olivia's] teeth in [his] flesh" (Calvino 23), at the same time he "also felt that [he] was acting on her, transmitting sensations that spread from the taste buds to his entire body” (Calvino 23). Therefore, “it was a reciprocal and complete relationship, which involved and overwhelmed [them]” (Calvino 23). In the same sense, “all were potentially both sacrificer and victim” (Calvino 26) in the ancient tradition of human sacrifice and, indeed, “without this reciprocity, human sacrifice would be unthinkable” (Calvino 26). Largely because Aztec human sacrifices were reciprocal (and the tradition endured), the narrator concludes that "the most appetizing-tasting human flesh belongs to the one who eats human flesh" (Calvino 26). Through this conclusion, he comes to another transformative realization: “only by feeding voraciously on Olivia would [he] cease to be tasteless to her palate” (Calvino 26). In other words, he couldn't imagine her eating it; for this relationship to be successful, he should eat her too. Their relationship must be reciprocal, just as ancient human sacrifices were reciprocal. Thus, reciprocity marks a late stage in the narrator's transformation - while at the beginning of the story he is largely separated from his wife, eating side by side, now that he is increasingly immersed in Mexican culture, he begins to realize that they should instead interact with each other, which goes beyond eating "normal" food, no matter how well mixed it is. By eating each other, their ties to Mexican culture transcend time and lead them into “universal cannibalism” (Calvino 29) in which everything in nature participates. And indeed, this universal cannibalism represents Calvino's third theme, that of the ouroboros, which brings the narrator fully into his new transformed self. Even if we try to ignore it, we are all part of this "universal cannibalism", although unlike the ancient Aztecs, for whom "there was no mystification" (Calvino 22), Olivia realizes that we “we tear ourselves apart by pretending not to know, by pretending we no longer taste the flavors” (Calvino 22). This statement echoes that made by Howard Neverov in his poem "Thanks to Being Said at the Supermarket", in which he calls humanity "great geometers" to describe us as gods of sorts, who put animal meat into “cubes”. cylinders”, “ellipsoids” and “squares and oblongs with all edges beveled”. Basically, his main point is that we try to ignore the fact that we eat life because we find it disgusting - and Calvino produces the same message through Olivia. Yet no matter how we present it, the fact remains the same: we are all basically “a bunch of tubes with teeth on the top.” We eat life to live, and as we live we produce more “tubes with teeth on top”; the cycle continues on and on, as the symbol of the ouroboros suggests. It is when the narrator realizes this, when he suddenly realizes that he must be part of the life around him and not just describe it, that he completes his transformation. He goes from being half-imbued in his new self to suddenly "living and dying in every fiber of what is chewed and digested and in every fiber that absorbs the sun, consumes and digests" (Calvino 29). There is nothing progressive.