CASA TOMADA de Julio Cortázar: SUMMARY and complete ANALYSIS

In 1947, Casa Tomada appeared, one of the most applauded stories by Julio Cortázar and that it saw the light thanks to the magazine "Los Anales de Buenos Aires" that was directed by Borges. It is a story widely studied in the classroom because it is a great sample of the style and narrative of this Argentine author: the mixture of the reality and fantasy, the distortion of everything we know, play and experimentation with what seems to be natural laws, etc. In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to offer you a summary of Casa Tomada and a full analysis that will allow us to better understand this story by Cortázar that caused so much commotion and continues to cause.

In order to better understand the magnitude that this story by Cortázar has, it is important that we Let's stop for a moment to know the summary of Casa Tomada and, thus, discover its argument and its structure. We must not forget that Julio Cortázar was one of the authors of the so-called magical realism, a Latin American current in which reality mixed with fantasy in a natural and simple way. In this story we also see the imprint of this current since the author manages to completely break with all the logic of space / time.

Summary of the beginning of Casa Tomada

At Casa Tomada we meet a narrator who is the main character of history. He narrates the plot in the first person and, therefore, all we receive is his own experience. Next to him we meet Irene, his sister, a person with whom the narrator is very close and who support each other in all moments of their lives. Both live in a house that, today, is a kind of family monument, the place where their memories live and where they were born and raised. They are both adults but they still live in the family home to maintain it and prevent it from becoming ruined.

However, the house is quite old and living in it is not as peaceful as it once was. The two brothers live inside the house as if it were your own shelter, a place where they feel completely protected from everything that happens outside. The two protagonists have never worked because their parents left them an important inheritance that allows them to maintain themselves and to remain isolated from the world inside their home. They live in a permanent state of comfort and do not dare to leave that world in which they feel so protected.

Summary of the Casa Tomada knot

In order to clearly visualize what the house is like, the author dwells in detail on the characteristic elements of the building and this is how we know that the brothers, for a long time, they hear murmurs that come from one of the rooms in the house. They are something like whispers that make the brothers are in continuous tension and scared by not knowing what or who is generating these sounds.

The noises heard in the house are noises such as the dragging of a chair, footsteps, and so on. As the story progresses, the brothers listen louder and closer to all these sounds that seem to be stepping on their feet. Scared, the protagonists decide start getting rid of all objects that make those sounds: chairs, tables, etc. But this is not the solution because new objects begin to emit the suspicious sounds.

Outcome of Casa Tomada

To finish with this summary of Casa Tomada it is important to discover how this story ends. The brothers, increasingly frightened by the incessant murmurs, they end up leaving home And throwing keys down the sewers They do not want to re-enter this house that seems to be haunted or inhabited by some entity that is not visible to human eyes.

We do not know why these murmurs occur or why, the only thing we know is that the brothers they end up resigning themselves and abandoning their place of residence, their lifelong refuge, due to the presence of an unknown nature that threatens them. Instead of facing this threat, the brothers decide to hide and retreat more and more until they end up leaving their home.

It's about a characteristic tale of Julio Cortázar's narrative since in it, an external element, is the one that distorts the reality and the stability initially presented.

We already started with the analysis of Casa Tomada to now talk about the characters in this story. The protagonists, as we have already commented, are the two brothers and one of them is the main narrator who is the one who tells us the story. Here we discover all the characters of the Casa Tomada that are part of the plot.

• Storyteller: we do not know the name of the main narrator of the story, one of the protagonists. It is through him who we know the events that take place inside the house since everything that happens is told from his perspective. He is about a 40-year-old man who lives with his sister Irene, with whom he still lives in the family home. He is a very clean and careful man who is fascinated by French literature. He will be in charge of throwing the keys down the sewer so that no one else can re-enter the interior of his house that is now taken over.
• Irene: is the co-star of Casa Tomada, the sister of the narrator. She has a sweet and kind nature and loves to spend hours knitting in solitude and silence. She is a very beautiful woman who decided to reject marriage proposals and stay with her brother in her house for her whole life. For this reason, many critics have considered that the relationship between the siblings is more a relationship of marriage and conventional couple, not so much as siblings.

Although it is a short story, the truth is that in Casa Tomada we find another character who is very important in the plot: the house itself. And the fact is that the building not only acts as the stage in which the action occurs but it also becomes one more character.

The Taken House is the house that acts as a prison of siblings, like the shackles they have for memories and melancholy, their comfort zone that prevents them from moving forward and evolving in life. They are two characters that remain static due to the influence of this third character who is inanimate but has a very relevant importance in the story. In addition, finally it will be the house itself that will promote the development of the plot by kicking its inhabitants from its walls.

And we end this analysis of the Casa Tomada talking about other aspects that are very relevant and that have been strongly studied by experts. This story has a great symbolism that has been much debated and analyzed throughout history. Here we collect the highlights that have been commented on this story by Cortázar.

The house as the womb

Some experts have indicated that the house presented by Cortázar is a house that appears to be the belly maternal, a warm, safe and very pleasant place where the inhabitants cannot leave like this as well. The brothers do not want to leave that familiar and intimate place, a place where they feel protected from all evil.

The murmurs

What exactly are the murmurs heard in Casa Tomada that force the characters to leave their home? For many experts, these murmurs are situations that have been lived in the past, something like the ghosts of the past, that the characters have not been able to face. These metaphysical "ghosts" appear in the house and haunt the protagonists who don't have the guts to stand up to them.

The relationship between the siblings

We have already indicated in the previous section that Irene is a woman who has rejected many marriage proposals. This fact that is only mentioned in the story has created a great debate in the literary community since that many experts consider that the relationship between siblings goes beyond a family relationship. They present an intimacy and closeness more typical of life as a couple than not of a sibling relationship.

The Sebrelli hypothesis

Juan José Sebrelli carried out a political analysis on Casa Tomada, a very interesting reading known as the "Sebrelli hypothesis". Here a parallel is made between the house in which the brothers live with the Argentina of the time of Cortázar. For Sebrelli, the murmurs heard by the protagonists are the politicians who are gaining strength in Argentine society, Peronism. The brothers of Casa Tomada are the typical citizens who live off the inheritance and who are part of the wealthy class, Therefore, with the rise of Peronism, this type of people does not have space in Argentina and, little by little, they are expelled from their home.

For Sebrelli, the two brothers are the reflection of Argentine bourgeois society that, due to political reasons, end up losing their status and become a decadent class. In fact, the relationship they have between the two is a relationship that reflects the moral decline in which they find themselves.

The oak door

It is a very prominent element in Casa Tomada. It is a large and wide door that separates the brothers in some moments of the day when they are looking for privacy. But this door also symbolizes confinement and exile, the door that prevents the brothers from living the instability that existed in the country and from continuing to live as they can. This door is the shield, the element that allows the brothers to protect themselves from everything that may lurk outside.

The key

It is the final element of Casa Tomada. This key is thrown by the narrator into the sewer to prevent anyone else from entering the house. This key thus symbolizes freedom in this story as it opens the door for them and allows them to leave their own prison.