"Circular Ruins" and "Library of Babel” —Jorge Luis Borges

The Circular Ruins

In this short story, the man keeps dreaming another man’s life, everything has no clue at the beginning of the story, which just shows different scenes in the dream, but it makes sense till the end. The dreamer uses different dreams to create another human being, when he thought he had finished the task, he found out that he is just a fictional human in other’s dream. I think this what “circular” means in Labyrinth.

This story reminds me of “parallel universe ”, which means there is another me in the parallel universe. After I reading the article, I feel as same as after I reading the article about parallel universe. Like everything I see, or I touch is so unreal. Because, you thought you know where is the beginning and the end in your life, but actually you do not know, you just in the labyrinth where had no end. There is always another you in the universe.

This is why I really like the short story, it confusing every details, messed up and then, put them together, everything makes sense. However, the result still like a dream, an unreal truth, like a labyrinth.

Library of Babel

This short story talks about if humans lives in a library and each of them has a book, which is their fate. The fate has already set, and after they died, the fate will repeat for another human being. 

The labyrinth that Jorge Luis Borges described in this story is like a repeating loop. The human in the same book have the same life. It is like a rule, a circular rule. I think the interesting part in this story is to control a human’s life, and ask him to live in the labyrinth. I like Jorge’s creative imagination, if I did not read story like this, I would never thought a world could be metaphor as a library.

Comparing by this two stories, I like “The circular Ruins” more, because it kind gives me more inspiration for my project. I like how things is so confusing at first then everything has an answer. Or no answer, which gives more room for readers to image, to feel the unreal in their real life.