Borges Identity

In Jorge Luis Borges’s Borges and I, there is a distinct confliction between Borges’s personal and public identities. Throughout the short story, the reader notices Borges’s realization in his confusion of his writing identity. Overall, the theme of identity creates interaction with the reader which creates meaning.

In the beginning of the short story, the narrator states that the “other Borges” is walking through Buenos Aires and pauses looking at surrounding objects. The meaning of this line is Borges is looking at his past literary works with his current works. This allows the reader of the text to reminisce about previous accomplishments to add meaning to the story. When Borges states, “I live, I allow myself to live, so that Borges
At this point, Borges recognizes that at one point, he will lose himself and become a victim of the author. Borges says, “Little by little, I have been turning everything over to him, though I know the perverse ways he has of distorting and magnifying everything.” This line shows that the “real Borges” has “magnified” and “distorted” his own writings and therefore created the “author Borges” of which he is no longer able to identify himself from. The narrator is also portraying that sometimes the worklife of an author can completely destroy an author’s personal life. A reader can connect to this part of the text by understanding that letting something get out of hand can lead to the destruction of your true values. Overall, Borges understands his consequences of creating two different persona’s which ultimately led to his
Borges says, “Years ago I tried to free myself from him, and I moved on from the mythologies of the slums and outskirts of the city to games with time and infinity, but those games belong to Borges now,” he is showing that no matter how hard he tries to get rid of his second persona, it will always follow him around. A reader can draw meaning from the text by understanding that your past mistakes will follow you wherever you go and you cannot free yourself no matter how hard you try. In the next line, Borges demonstrates how all of his actions benefit from one of his persona’s over the other. When he says, “Everything winds up being lost to me,” Borges realizes that he will be consumed by the public Borges and the Borges he knows will cease to exist. In the last line of this short story, it appears that Borges is so conflicted between both of his persona’s that he cannot figure out who wrote this