Heroism and Treachery in Jorge Luis Borges - Essay Example

Discuss (herosim and Treachery) in Jorge Luis Borges' "The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero","The Shape of the Sword." Jorge Luis Borges was of unique skill in the art of literary fiction. His substantial readerships admire him for his clear, lucid prose and its ability to perfectly examine the most profound of human topics. An intelligent approach to story telling, and one that holds the reader's interest, has been a hallmark of a his work for decades. A typical thing in Borges' works is they assume confusion and chaos. A prevailing, underlying order seems to act as a foundation for his expositions on everything from human society under extreme conditions to the basic elements of thought and emotion as they may exist in the absence of all else. He can be considered as a master of surrealist prose, and a literary genius. His works are abstract yet somehow always concretely themed and indisputably compelling. His stories characterize a holistic view of humanity and its endless struggle towards improvement while often altogether missing the point. Often his characters act completely focused on a specific problem or set of ideas, while Borges reveals to the reader that these ideas are superfluous and that the true meanings are hidden elsewhere. In his work, the themes of chaos and indefinite repetition work to establish themselves in universes where man's perception of reality, if not reality itself, works in a fundamentally different manner. The concepts he chooses to convey, on the other hand, are not usually apparent to the reader. Several attempts to understand are usually required for his message to our conscious minds. He made note of the fact that he excluded women from his texts, claiming that he did not understand women well enough to write about them. As masterful author, he used character and literary device to adroitly convey an important idea to any reader. It is Borges' abstract material, which lends itself to contrast. He portrays standard events and societies in an unusual context. While several examples lend themselves to this conclusion, the devices used by author most clearly illustrate that of a manipulative secret organization controlling the fate of society, and that of the coexistence and unification of the protagonist and antagonist. While these two specific and unusual themes are present in several works by author, a juxtaposition of the works will clearly show the dramatic difference present in the underlying themes. The image we get from Borges is of a random and often malicious organization that uses its calculative abilities to further whims and chance with little if any good for society as a whole. He even gives the impression that the rewards and punishments are in some sort of equilibrium and are designed to preserve the status quo. In "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero" and "Three Versions of Judas," Borges presents two individuals struggling with the realization that our present-day conceptions of the past may be inconsistent with the actual truth. By undermining the traditional concepts of hero and traitor, as they are presented in historical and religious narratives, Borges calls into question the absolute faith with which people place their trust in what may amount to just another story. In "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero," The narrative begins suspiciously, setting the scene as "Poland, Ireland, [or] the Republic of Venice." The generalizing technique immediately universalizes both the story of Kilpatrick and the experience of Ryan the biographer. The narrator explains that "although [Ryan] is contemporary, the narrative related by him occurred toward the middle or the beginning of the nineteenth century." This comment serves as a subtle reminder that even Ryan's version of Kilpatrick's fall is subject to the same skeptical scrutiny as any historical account. As Shakespeare fictionalizes the death of Julius Caesar; Nolan plagiarizes the plays of Shakespeare in orchestrating his plan; and finally, as the gatekeepers of history record only the superficially relevant events of a deeply involved labyrinth of historical value. The interaction between the storytellers produces a tangled web of correspondences where truth and lies mix and the fiction of Shakespeare becomes as factually accurate or inaccurate as a history textbook. Borges illustrates the blurring of literary and historical value by writing, "that history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvelous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable." Borges seems to suggest that the act of touching pen to paper immediately abstract the conventional notions of fiction and nonfiction - to the point where a conceivable work of fiction exists more tangibly than an extraordinary account of historical fact. Like reality, in the world of "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero," the process of historical narration requires all readers to also be storytellers - they perpetuate this paradoxically-fictional/factual account of history. Through Ryan the biographer, and Kilpatrick's town in Ireland, Borges implicates his readers, "Kilpatrick was brought to his end in a theater, but he made of the entire city a theater, too". Borges indicts people as a community for acting as an accessory to the manipulation of history. However, by saying, "what they said and did remains in the books of history, in the impassioned memory of Ireland," Borges calls attention to a dangerous aspect of the cyclical nature of narrators and readers. Ryan's daunting transgression at the close of the story proves to be more dangerous still. Whereas the imperfections of collective memory yield passively benign errors, Ryan's individual omission withholds what would seem to be the final truth behind the legacy of Kilpatrick. However, according to Borges's model of narration, even this supposed truth must be scrutinized. In 'The Shape of the Sword', Borges symbolises physical appearance or symbols with the past, nature or the deeds of the man. Vincent moons deceives his host and protector and lives in Brazil. He portrays with which kind of agony one's conscience tortures him about his wrong doings in the past. He asks his guest to despise him, as he was the traitor in the story after telling about himself to a man who took shelter unmindfully in his house. He spends his life in that Brazilian town without having accomplices, associates, relatives and friends. The past deed he committed made him lonely in his life. There is no other punishment other than loneliness to a human being as he was a social animal. The Author indirectly prints this in readers' mind. The shape of the sword is similar to the scar on the traitor Vincent Moon's face which is symbolic to the saying that punishment one gets for his misdeeds leaves him in a state of repenting and answerable to his own self. Thus he puts before readers the inner agony and grief of a betrayer and his own conscience made him unable to bear his agony, though he have enough money and safety from the revolutionaries to which the person deceived by him belong. He lives in a faraway place and has enough money and good business to live on. But nothing matters in the story as his heart and consciences were filled with grief and repentance for the betrayal he committed. He narrates as a third party his own story that how he deceived his accomplice who saved him from bullet injury and soldiers for 10 days and asks to despise him. This tells the readers that one may escape from whole of the world but not from his own self. References and bibiliography 1. http://www.coldbacon.com/writing/borges-sword.html 2. www.themodernword.com/borges/borges Read More