Summary In Calvino's The Adventure Of A Nearsighted Man

In Calvino’s “The Adventure of a Nearsighted Man” the protagonist is a man named Amilcare Carruga who goes from seeing the world in uninteresting blurs to being captivated by the world around him once he can see it clearly. Upon gaining a new curiosity for life as a result of getting new glasses, Amilcare breaks through psychological defenses he had set up in order to protect himself from his fear of facing the past.
Gaining the courage to return to his childhood city due to his new lenses, Amilcare’s return to V. begins the breakdown of his defenses. By returning to V. he cannot avoid the past because he is back at the birthplace of the memories that he wanted to avoid. The reader knows two things about Amilcare’s traumatic past in V. One, …show more content…
result in him struggling with a fear of intimacy. This is emphasized by his lack of attachment to people throughout the story. Amilcare does not look for any sort of romance or companionship. In the beginning, while Amilcare is still at a bleak point in his life, he mentions his difficulty when it comes to visually appreciating women. Amilcare recalls a time when he would hungrily gaze at women in comparison to the way that he watches women at the beginning of the story, when Amilcare is at a point that he instinctively looks at woman out of habit. It brings him no excitement because it is merely a remnant of his old ways (272). This shows that, while Amilcare does not seek to find character in a woman, he does not even seek to admire a woman for her physical traits. Once Amilcare could see the world clearly, he would go walking without his glasses only to spot a woman and immediately put on his glasses so that he could look at her. There would be times where he would judge a woman from afar without his glasses and a woman may not prove worthy of capturing his attention merely because her walk is not interesting enough. He would often come to regret his methods when a woman walked close enough to him and he would realize that his judgement from afar was not accurate and he would find himself attracted to the woman as she walked by. Then, she would disappear from his life and he knew he would not recognize her on another day (273). This exemplifies that, upon aiding his vision and finding in himself a will to watch the world around him, including women, Amilcare is only willing to superficially judge the women that pass him by. Even if they capture his attention, Amilcare does not care enough to remember the faces of these women. His ability to clearly see women changes, but his respect for women remains the same. In the story, women are constantly treated like objects for Amilcare to gaze at with desire. Just by looking at