History Creator / JorgeLuisBorges

-->''I had realized many years before I met David Jerusalem that [[ArtifactOfAttraction everything in the world can be the seed of a possible hell; a face, a word, a compass, an advertisement for cigarettes—anything can drive a person insane if that person cannot manage to put it out of his mind. Wouldn't a man be mad if he constantly had before his mind's eye the map of Hungary?]] I decided to apply this principle to the disciplinary regimen of our house, and—'' [--4--]

* BigBad: [[spoiler: Azevedo Bandeira]] in ''"The dead man"'', [[spoiler: Red Scarlarch]] in ''"The death and the compass"'']].

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' [[ApocalypticLog It is the last testament of]] Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}, and tries to [[FlingALightIntoTheFuture FlingDarknessIntoTheFuture]] while he awaits the firing squad.

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' [[ApocalypticLog It is the last testament of]] Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}, and tries to [[ FlingALightIntoTheFuture FlingDarknessIntoTheFuture]] while he awaits the firing squad.

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' [[ApocalypticLog It is the last testament of]] Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackyNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}, and tries FlingALightIntoTheFuture while he awaits the firing squad.

* ''"Deutsches Requiem:"'' [[ApocalypticLog It is the last testament of]] Otto Dietrich zur Linde, [[ThoseWackingNazis the one-legged commandant of a Nazi concentration camp]]. After being tried and convicted of crimes against humanity, Zur Linde reflects that while his comrades were mere {{StrawNihilist}}s, he (and Hitler) were real {{Ubermensch}}, and tries FlingALightIntoTheFuture while he awaits the firing squad.

** The poem ''SherlockHolmes'' is about how this fictional character managed to survive his CreatorBacklash to the point to [[OutlivedHisCreator Outlive His Creator]], realizing that literature has made an immortal character simply because Holmes was never alive. Borges published this poem at the ''Los conjurados'', his last book, and died some months after its publication.

* ''"The Garden of Forking Paths"'': The FramingDevice is a spy story set at World War I where TheProtagonist visiting MrExposition who explains TheProtagonist SecretLegacy by exploring the idea of time branching forwards into [[AlternateUniverse Alternate Universes]] [[note]]this story is famous for anticipating the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics[[/note]]. [[{{Irony}} Ironically]], TheProtagonist is also [[spoiler: a {{Determinator}} who will make sure [[YouCantFightFate there is ''only one'' possible universe]] [[ShootTheShaggyDog whatever it takes.]] ]].

* ''"Funes the Memorious"'': After being concussed and paralyzed from the waist down in a riding accident, a young man suddenly finds that he has a literally photographic memory -- he can remember ''everything'' that he has experienced, ''every'' second of ''every'' day of his life, down to the minutest possible detail... and as he goes on living, the number of things he remembers continue piling up. This has a very strange effect on the way he sees the world, and after meeting him, Borges' narrator cannot decide whether Funes is CursedWithAwesome or BlessedWithSuck.

* ''"The Cult of the Phoenix"'': A group of madmen, outcasts, women, children, and urchins founds a philosophical school that lasts for thousands of years and secretly manipulates all other religions behind the scenes. [[spoiler:And they're the good guys.]]

* ''"The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths"'': A deconstruction of SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: The Prideful King of Babilon mocks the King of Arabia by forcing him to enter his BigLabyrinthineBuilding. The King of Arabia asks for God's help, [[DeusExMachina and gets out]]. He tells the King of Babylon he knows a better labyrinth and some day he will show it to him. Years later, [[spoiler: The Arabian King [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge makes war and dethrones the King of Babylon,]] [[CrossingTheDesert cross with him the Arabian desert]] and abandones the King of Babylon there, [[ThirstyDesert where he died from thirst and hunger]] ]].
* ''"The Immortal:"'' The FramingDevice has [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis a literary agent]] announcing the discovery of an {{ImmortalitySeeker}}’s {{Diary}} that claims to have achieved CompleteImmortality. The story develops the ExpositionOfImmortality by [[ImmortalityImmorality exploring the ethics]] in a SocietyOfImmortals really facing the TimeAbyss. The exploration includes typical tropes under ThisIndexWillLiveForever, [[note]] WhoWantsToLiveForever, ImmortalityHurts, ImmortalLifeIsCheap [[/note]] but also some others completely original. [[note]] YouWillBeBeethoven, GoldenMeanFallacy and BystanderSyndrome. [[/note]] TheFogOfAges makes the Immortal an UnreliableNarrator, and his narration is denounced as {{plagiarism}} by a CausticCritic. However, [[spoiler: the [[LiteraryAgentHypothesis a literary agent]] reflects that the fact that the immortal’s {{Diary}} is a ClicheStorm is the evidence that the {{Diary}} is BasedOnATrueStory]]
* ''"The Dead Man:"'' Borges narrates the seemingly imposible life and death of Benjamín Otalora, a corageous argentinean hoodlum who emigrated to the frontier and became the leader of a band of smugglers, [[{{Deconstruction}} explaining why it was posible.]]

* ''[[http://www.poeticous.com/borges/sherlock-holmes?trans=t&locale=es SherlockHolmes]]'': A celebration about the GreatDetective that centers about how he managed to survive his CreatorBacklash to the point to [[OutlivedItsCreator Outlive His Creator]]

* ''Half-Way House, By Ellery Queen'': A simple critic about the rules of the MysteryLiterature and how that genre is different from the [[{{Adventure}} Adventure Novel]] or the SpyFiction. Also explains why Ellery Queen works could be considered as GrowingTheBeard on the genre. You cand find the quote at the ElleryQueen page.

* AdaptationExpansion: The movie version of ''"Death and the Compass"''; the added material actually makes the the story ''more'' of a MindScrew. "Days of Hate", a screenplay adaptation of ''"Emma Zunz"''

* {{Determinator}}: Deconstructed at ''"The Garden of Forking Paths"'', ''"The Shape of the Sword"'' and ''"Emma Zunz story"''. The protagonists had a goal and they will cross the MoralEventHorizon and the DespairEventHorizon to achieve it, only to ask themselves if WasItReallyWorthIt for the rest of their lives. ''"The other death"'' protagonist will achieve his goal, [[RedemptionEqualsDeath but just at the time of his death after trying it for all his life]]. The narrator [[EsotericHappyEnding thinks nobody could be happier than him]].

* MightyWhitey: [[spoiler: Deconstructed at]] "The Dead Man".

* MortalityEnsues: The protagonist of "The Immortal" finds a river that makes anyone who drinks from it immortal; after around a thousand years he [[spoiler:and the other inmortals]] gets bored and goes off on a [[spoiler:ultimately successful]] search for a hypothetical sister river that will make him mortal again.

* RealitySubtext: In the literally essay ''Kafka and his precursors'', Borges presents us with various literary works whose tone and material seem like forerunners of Creator/FranzKafka. Before Kafka, though, no one would have said they had much in common. Borges argues that the reality of the author's later career [[MindScrew created its precursors]], retroactively making them similar to each other!

* WeAreEverywhere: Deconstructed at ''The Lottery in Babylon:'' [[TheConspiracy The Company ]]is [[NebulousEvilOrganization continually trying to introduce chaos at Babylon]], and everyone knows they have infiltrated all the city. Given anyone could work for them, those who aren’t working for them are ProperlyParanoid about being manipulated into being their {{UnwittingPawn}}s:

--> ''Besides—[[FridgeHorror who will boast of being a mere impostor?]] [[ParanoiaFuel The drunken man who blurts out an absurd command, the sleeping man who suddenly awakes and turns and chokes to death the woman sleeping at his side—are they not, perhaps, implementing one of the Company's secret decisions?]]''

Borges became blind due to an inherited disease in his middle age and blindness is a recurring {{Motif|s}} in his later works. Other common motifs are labyrinths, mirrors, libraries, tigers, and daggers. The blind monk Jorge de Burgos in Creator/UmbertoEco's ''Literature/TheNameOfTheRose'' is one allusion to Borges. The blind librarian in ''[[BookOfTheNewSun The Shadow of the Torturer]]'' by GeneWolfe may be another.

** Similarly, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" begins with the narrator and a friend discussing how one might write a novel with a narrator so subtly unreliable that only a few perceptive readers would be able to figure out the truth.

* UnreliableNarrator: "The Other Death"; "The Immortal". The reliability of the narrator is [[LampshadeHanging questioned explicitly]] in the stories themselves; the latter one almost takes it into {{Deconstruction}} territory. "A Survey of the Works of Herbert Quain" mentions a story in which, based on the final sentence, the sagacious reader can discover that the solution to the mystery was ''wrong'' and, with that additional piece of information, can reconstruct what actually happened.

* MassiveMultiplayerScam: ''[[spoiler: "The dead man"]'', ''[[spoiler: "The man at the threshold"]'', ''[[spoiler: "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero"]''.

* MassiveMultiplayerScam: [[spoiler: ''"The dead man"''], [[spoiler: ''"The man at the threshold"''], [[spoiler: ''"Theme of the Traitor and the Hero"''],

* ''Half-Way House, By Ellery Queen'': A simple critic about the rules of the MysteryLiterature and how that genre is different from the AdventureNovel or the SpyFiction. Also explains why Ellery Queen works could be considered as GrowingTheBeard on the genre. You cand find the quote at the ElleryQueen page.

* [[http://www.poeticous.com/borges/sherlock-holmes?trans=t&locale=es SherlockHolmes]]: A celebration about the GreatDetective that centers about how he managed to survive his CreatorBacklash to the point to [[OutlivedItsCreator Outlive His Creator]]

* Half-Way House, By Ellery Queen: A simple critic about the rules of the MysteryLiterature and how that genre is different from the AdventureNovel or the SpyFiction. Also explains why Ellery Queen works could be considered as GrowingTheBeard on the genre. You cand find the quote at the ElleryQueen page.

* TheBadGuyWins: [[spoiler: Arguably, "Garden of Forking Paths". Definitively, "Death and the Compass"]]

* ''"The Dead Man:"'' Borges narrates the seemingly imposible life and death of Benjamín Otalora, a corageous argentinean hoodlum who emigrated to the frontier and became the leader of a band of smugglers, [[Deconstruction explaining why it was posible.]]

* [[http://www.poeticous.com/borges/sherlock-holmes?trans=t&locale=es SherlockHolmes]]: A celebration about the GreatDetective that centers about how he managed to survive his CreatorBacklash to the point to being OutlivedItsCreator.