The Salamander Short Story Analysis

Being different can sometimes be somewhat scary because one may be considered an outcast. Being an outcast can be quite difficult especially when people can be cruel. In the short story “The Salamander,” the narrator is considered an outcast because she is different and does not follow society’s norms. The author from this short story, Mercè Rodoreda, can be compared to the narrator because she too did not follow the norms. Rodoreda’s short story includes some aspects that can be compared to her life, yet many other aspects in her story are inexplicable. “The Salamander” by Mercè Rodoreda can be described as a fantastic story because of the fantastic elements it contains, such as hesitation and liminality. The short story fits well into Todorov’s definition of the fantastic because it creates hesitation for the readers when the narrator experiences rebirth and it includes several examples of liminality. Liminality can be seen when the defined lines between human and animal, and life and death are blurred.

As a salamander, she still goes to check on the married man although she can not do anything about it. She watches and hears the man, whom she greatly cares for, with his wife from under the bed or on the window. The narrator says, “I crawled over to the light and placed myself right under the cross because inside myself, even though I wasn’t dead, there was nothing inside me that was totally alive” (Rodoreda 10). After seeing the man, she describes that she does not feel alive, but she knows she is not dead either. This lets the readers know that she is living her life with liminality. This is more of a mental state of liminality between being dead and being alive, since she is not physically experiencing any harm. This mental liminality along with the other present liminalities in the story create a very confusing world for the