‘The Southern Thruway’ by Julio Cortazar
‘The Southern Thruway’ by Julio Cortazar is a narrative set on the highway to Paris from Southern France. Along the way, a heavy traffic jam is encountered, and the travelers are expressing their displeasure and talking about the possible causes for that jam. However, the story is not just about restless travelers but carries a deeper meaning. The entire story is a metaphor, and thus this paper seeks to analyze the writing styles that are used in the story to suggest that it is a metaphor as well as to examine the deeper meaning of the story.
The analysis
First, by enclosing all characters in one place, that is the road, serves a variety of purposes. That enclosure facilitates interaction between people without external influences. It also creates a picture of the real world because the people enclosed represent various categories of people. For example, it represents the professional world through the engineer, the doctor, the salesperson, the nuns, the soldier, and the farmer (Cortazar, p.3). In addition to that, it represents people of all age groups which include children (Dauphine's child), youth (the boys in the Simca) and old people (the old woman in the beau lieu). The enclosed scenario also represents the different situations that people encounter in real life. It expresses hope and despair, life and death. Every traveler trapped in the jam views it as an emergency situation which pushed everyone to exercise their best qualities. It urged people to show compassion, leadership skills, and generosity.
The travelers collectively work together because any societal divisions do not bind them. They are driven by one survival instinct, which is to get the traffic moving to reach Paris. The story serves to push the modern day population to shift their care from materialism and technology to the values and nature of human beings. Therefore, Julio proves that the society fails in solving some problems due to a lack of togetherness and collective thinking which is caused by socio-economical differences.
On the other hand, the highway is used to represent life's journey. Just like the highway where everyone drives their cars to their destination, everyone in life is heading to a unique destination. The vehicles may seem to move in one direction, but the specific destinations are different. Similarly, in life, we all seem to be fighting similar battles such as meeting basic needs, but we all end up having separate lives. Also although all people will die, death comes to a specific individual, at a particular time, signifying that individual's journey's end.
The author further identifies the travelers by the names of their cars, a method that resembles the technique of calling people by their surnames or using registration numbers to identify them. The naming method also coincides with the highway language and situation. For example, on the road, we say, "That Toyota premium is moving slowly." This technique is a representation of the modern world's method of classifying people according to their wealth, knowledge and social security. Also, the author uses sentence variations with long uninterrupted sentences when the traffic flows, and short broken sentences when it stops. This technique represents how life moves fast when everything is ok, and how it seems to stop when something unexpected happens.
Conclusion
Finally, with the invention of technology and a rapidly growing economy, the world has forgotten the traditional relations and values of human beings. Hence, Cortazar's story sought to create a situation where people would relate purely according to their human qualities without the use of technology or the barriers of socio-economic differences.
Works Cited
Cortazar, Julio. The Southern Thruway. n.d. Document.
