The stories in the
Final del juego are representative of Cortázar's early fiction: "abstract, allegorical tales colored by the supernatural." A number of these early tales present "an alternative dimension" or "
Lo Fantastico." Cortázar acknowledged that these tales were indeed "fantastic" in that "they oppose the false realism that consists of believing that all things can be described and explained according to the philosophical and scientific optimism of eighteen century..." Literary critic John Ditski describes Julio Cortázar as a "disciple" of fellow Argentine
Jorge Luis Borges, and provides representative samples of Cortázar's technical devices, plot structures and themes that characterize his work based on all the stories in the volume. == Footnotes ==