Cuatro tipos de personajes infantiles en los cuentos de Julio Cortázar

The theme of childhood frequently recurs in the works of Julio Cortázar. For instance, out of his 234 short stories, approximately one-third include child characters. The classification of characters constitutes a common approach in the study of literary characterization. In line with this tradition, and based on a detailed reading of all of Cortázar’s short stories, the present study proposes four main types of child characters in his stories: the child as protagonist and subject, the child as an object observed by adults, the child of the past, and the child who never grows up. This classification considers various aspects, such as the degree of subjectivity of the child characters, their role in the narrative structure, their level of personalization, and their relationship with narrative time. The corpus examined and the categorization of its characters are the result of a process of detailed reading and review of Cortázar's short stories.