A cross-section of Buenos Aires society wins a cruise, with the details of the trip shrouded in mystery. What is the name of the ship? Where are they headed? Who are our fellow passengers? Why has the crew locked all doors leading to the stern?
The premise of The Winners suggests that a disquieting allegory along the lines of Blindness. However, Cortázar downplays the thriller elements in favor of social satire. He uses the crew's strange behavior as a way to reveal the characters rather than as a puzzle to be solved. It's an allegory for sure, but it's also a MacGuffin. The epigraph from Dostoyevsky gives a clue about what Cortázar is up to:
What is an author to do with ordinary people, absolutely "ordinary," and how can he put them before his readers so as to make them at all interesting?
The story is full of contrasting pairs: two young unmarried couples, two confirmed bachelors unexpectedly drawn to female passengers, two boys who get sick, two schoolteachers, two crew members in the secret corridor, characters named Lopez and Lucio, Persio and Pelusa. These pairs cycle through variations of similar scenarios.
I suspect the translation of leaving something to be desired. There were several passages that felt like they might be more trenchant in the original Spanish.
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