“The Circular Ruins” by Jorge Luis Borges Literature Analysis Essay

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Reality is the creation of human brathe in

Many philosophers and thinkers still argue about many issues of human beia ng. One of the most disputable issues is the essence of reality. People cannot agree whether onthe reality is objective or subjective. One of the eminent thinkers of the 20th, Jorge Luis Borges reveals his own vision about reality in his famous story The Circular Ruins. Borges suggests that reality is the creation of human brain: every person has this person’s reality where the person is a creator and a creature, father and a son.

Co-existence of different realities

Borges depicts a wizard who lives in his own world, the world of his dreams and contemplations. The wizard had a purpose in his life: he “wanted to dream a man” (Borges 58). The wizard could start his creation only in his dreams, so he spent a lot of his time creating, i.e. dreaming. The real world of the wizard intermingled with his dreams. In this way any person does exist. Dreams bring to life new images and notions which penetrate the reality of people, changing their perception.

Of course, people have their own realities, they perceive some situations and notions in different ways. However, people still co-exist and their realities also do. Borges admits that people affect other people’s realities. Thus, his wizard’s reality was disturbed by “two oarsmen” who told him about “a charmed man in a temple of the North” who was his creation, his son (Borges 62). This knowledge made him understand what he had to do. The reality is changed due to new visions and new dreams, each person experiences this million times.

The relativity of positions of a creator and creation

Of course, Borges suggests reveals his ideas about reality in his peculiar symbolic way. He uses such symbols as fire and creation. Borges states the relativity of the present world by the idea that a person cannot know what is real and what is just a dream, who is a creator and who is a creature. Borges suggests a formula which can explain everything. The wizard “understood that he also was an illusion, that someone else was dreaming him” (Borges 63). People should also feel that.

The Fire is that incomprehensible force which makes people live and die. The essence of reality is beyond human’s understanding. Though, human creations will last longer than their creators, the god Fire will have no mercy to the latter. However, the reality is cyclical, and as Borges said, “what had happened many centuries before was repeating itself” (Borges 63). Creation is as much an illusion as reality itself. People will never reveal the nature of reality since it is given to them by somebody else.

What reality is?

In his The Circular Ruins, Borges suggests that the reality is a mere perception of every person. Reality is composed of the perception of events and dreams. Dreaming plays a very important role in every person’s reality creation, which is why the worlds of dreams and “objective” day perception should coexist. It is essential to accept that the reality is something people can never explain since it can never be clear who is the creator and who is the creation.

Works Cited

Borges, Jorge Luis. Ficciones. New York: Grove Press, 1962.

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