In the following essay, Wight offers her view of the theme of contradiction in "Axolotl," focusing on Cortazar's narration.

Contradiction is all one can cling to in the short tale "Axolotl," which takes place in the aquarium at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris one spring after a wintry Lent; deception is all one can count on in this story of a tiny animal that is not yet really even an animal; purposeful obfuscation of fact is all one can grasp in this artistic fabrication by Julio Cortazar; confusion is all that appears trustworthy.

Perhaps its very being is an impossibility - the existence of this impossible object, although some first-person narrator (Cortazar? highly unlikely) has called the creature an "axolotl" and has even described it. The reader sees, thrown before him by the magic lantern of precise, vivid description, the little rosy translucent body six inches...