Theme of the Traitor and the Hero

"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players " comes to mind after reading Borges's piece. Although Kilpatrick played the role of saint in the public's eyes, he was ultimately the villian. I found it heartbreaking and somewhat humorous the amount of work put into making Kilpatrick's death seem like a noble one; the lengths some will go to cover up a secret is astounding.

The short story in itself has many references to other works; as Ryan is slowly piecing together the events that led up to Kilpatrick's demise, he discovers the "parallelisms" between Kilpatrick and Julius Caesar. Nolan takes ideas from Shakespeare's Macbeth and Julius Caesar to plan the whole spectacle. This is, of course, is done quite deliberately as a way of Nolan's to have someone discover Kilpatrick's truth one day. Still, the idea of fabricating a world to maintain appearances would make anyone wonder if anything in their life is true.

There is a tone of irony and even humor in the piece; Kilpatrick assigns Nolan to discover the traitor knowing the possibility of being found out himself. On the other hand, this could have been done purposely by Kilpatrick. The reference to Yeats's poem The Tower made me wonder about such a possibility. In researching a bit, it seems as though the speakers in both works encounter a similar dilemma. Much like Kilpatrick has to choose between dying a hero at the hands of Nolan or dying a traitor at the hands of the people, the speaker in Yeats's poem feels the need to choose between poetry and reason.

Perhaps Borges includes this piece of Yeats's text to display its possible inspiration to him. I think it just continues to proves intertextuality in all its forms and how it occurs throughout history.

What makes an adaptation?

After discussing Cortázar's "Blowup" or, " Las Babas del Diablo", as is the title in Spanish, I was struck by the notion of the speaker having to recount his story as a means to "get rid of that tickle in the stomach that bothers [him]." Describing his need to tell the story in this way, I figure the speaker does this as a form of relief. The details of the events that have transpired are much traumatic to keep to himself.

Then I wondered: how will Antonioni portray the speaker's sensation, his urgency to communicate his experiences to the reader? Will he mention or omit this reaction, which is crucial in the development of the story? This all depends on how Antonioni adapted the short story.

There have been many disagreements over the requirements for an adaptation. Many scholars, as noted in Stam's essay, "Beyond Fidelity," have thought that any digression from the novel to film is considered a "betrayal." Stam, however, tells us to lighten up.

In most cases, adaptations are more "translations" of the work rather than a strict adherence to it. Based on the director and other visionaries in charge of the film, there will be things lost in the translation from literature to cinema, as well as things added.

This brings about the idea of intertextuality, or as Gérard Genette describes it, the "effective co-presence of two texts." According to him, adaptation participates in a "double intertextuality" because it includes both the piece of fiction and the movie. Among the five types of intertextuality Genette mentions, Blowup is considered an "architextuality," simply because Antonioni changed the title of the short story for his film. One can hypothesize that from such a change, that Antonioni probably did not make an exact replica of "Las Babas del Diablo" in the form of a film. Does that then, not make it an adaptation? "Blowup" is also a part of Genette's theory of "hypertextuality," which is where an original work, or "hypertext," inspires other works based on it, or "hypotexts." If traced back far enough, it can be found that all art is, in some way, hypertextual.

Stam concludes that audiences should be open to different interpretations when it comes to adaptations of novel to screen. The "differences among the media" should be appreciated. Even though "Blowup" may not be "Las Babas del Diablo," it is still a work of art that has since inspired other film adaptations, alas, in the true form "hypertextuality."