Essay on The Book of Sand Text

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length: 1136 words 3.2 double spaced pages jorge luis borges is a famous spanish author, known best for his short stories. Borges, what influenced him in his writings, and a brief history of his place of origin, argentina. Borges' the book of sand is the story of a man who is visited by a stranger trying to sell a holy book called the book of sand. The narrator looks at the book and is unable to see the first or last pages of it because, as the stranger explains, the number of pages is infinite.

The narrator is fascinated by the book and buys it, only to become obsessed with it, until the point that it is all he thinks about. He eventually gets rid of it by mixing it up in a pile of many other books in his basement. As will be discussed in this paper, borges wrote philosophy in a lot of his works.

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The other is the story of borges sitting on a bench, as he feels as though he had lived that moment already. He begins to speak to the man seated besides him, and finds out the stranger has the same name, and the same address as he does. When borges asks the man what year it is, the man answers 1918, even though it is 1969. It is then that the narrator figures out he is talking to the person whom he was fifty one years earlier. Jorge luis borges is a famous spanish author, known best for his short stories. He then tells the other him of the future, after which they part, knowing they will never meet like this again. It also is a philosophical story where borges expresses his doubt that we all may just be an image of a greater being.

Expository Essay Body Paragraph Structure

The mirror and the mask is the story of an irish king who tells a poet to write a poem describing his power. The poet wrote a praise of his fighting success, and in reward for the excellent poem, the king gives the poet a beautiful mirror and tells him to write another poem. The king then asks for a third poem and receives a one line poem of perfection and in return gives him an elaborate dagger. The poet feels it to be a sin to hear such perfection and so he stabs himself with the dagger.

The king also feels he has done wrong and becomes a beggar in his own kingdom never to repeat the poem again. What borges is saying in this story is that should not try to understand g d because he is unable to comprehend him. Jorge luis borges was born august 24, 1899 to a financially comfortable family in buenos aires, argentina. He learned at home with a tutor until he was nine and began to learn english at home from his father, who always encouraged him to write. He came from a very literate family, and shared much cherished time with his father's books.

Borges once said for years i believed i had been brought up in a suburb of buenos aires, a suburb of dangerous streets and conspicuous sunsets. What is certain is that i was brought up in a garden, behind lanceolate iron railings, in a library of unlimited english books. Here, he was referring to his father's library he was also greatly influenced by published poets and writers who were friends of the family and often visited. In 1914, before world war i, borges' family went to europe where they traveled until the war was over.

During these years of traveling, borges, in his teenage years, depended a lot on the company of his readings mainly german philosophy and poetry. When his family returned to buenos aires, they were greeted by a more economically flourishing and modernized due to european immigrants home. At first he did not care for the book, until the stranger selling bibles said the number of pages in this book is literally infinite. He began losing sleep from the investigation and when he actually got sleep, his dreams were about the book. As it states in the short story, at night, during the rare intervals spared me by insomnia, i dreamed of the book. He had grown an obsession with the book, which altered his lifestyle and forced him to hide the book in the library. The literary device that the author uses to compare the book and himself to was a metaphor.

When the narrator said, it was cold consolation to think that i, who looked upon it with my eye and fondled it with my ten flesh and bone fingers, was no less monstrous than the book , this proved that he was comparing himself to the monstrous book. The meaning and significance of this metaphor states that he was no different from the book. As it stated in the short story, i felt it was a nightmare thing, an obscene thing, and that it defiled and corrupted reality. The narrator felt that the deadly secrets that emanated from the book were all getting to his head. His fear of infinite evil caused him to hide the demonic book and run away from the eternal thoughts. Jorge luis borges the book of sand class: spanish iia date: april 1, 1993 spanish iia jorge luis borges is a famous spanish author, known best for his short stories.