Ending On Death

Lillian Novak
COLT1420T
October 23, 2011

Ending on Death

Many of Jorge Luis Borges’s stories focus on the theme of death, and in several this theme manifests itself in aconcluding sentence telling of the main character’s demise. This pattern is broken with “The South,” where the final sentence of the story tells instead of the main character’s departure on a journeythat may very well lead to his death, but his ultimate fate is left uncertain. Comparison of “The South” with several of Borges’s stories that do end with a definite death suggests that the kind oflife Juan Dahlmann of “The South” lived, and the reaction it provokes in the reader, varies so sharply with that of Borges’s other characters that it makes his common final sentence unnecessary for thisstory.
“Funes, The Memorius” tells of Ireneo Funes, a young man who suffers a head injury and acquires the ability to remember everything he experiences; he “died in 1889, of a pulmonarycongestion” (115). “Death and the Compass” tells the story of detective Erik Lönnrot, who becomes consumed in investigating a series of murders he believes to be connected to an ancient Jewish mysticalbeliefs, but in fact were an elaborate plot to entice him to the location of his own murder. The final scene depicts Lönnrot and his assassin, ending with, “Then, very carefully, he fired” (141). “TheSecret Miracle” depicts Jaromir Hladík, a writer of Jewish heritage determined to finish a play before the Nazis commute his death sentence. The story ends with his death by firing squad.
All of theabove-mentioned stories share in common a tragic, pitiable main character, whose death is premature and in no way of their own volition. Funes dies at only forty years old, having lived the life of amachine, constantly processing information and never getting the chance to think as a human does. Lönnrot’s death is also extremely sad; the reader sympathizes with the clever detective figure who...