Borges' view on eternity and death
Being forever: happy vs suffering
The word forever is tossed around a lot nowadays. I hear it constantly from couples and friends and family that they will love you “forever”, which no one really thinks much of. Do they mean until death? Or do they mean above and beyond death? And then if someone can love you forever, then the opposite must be true and eternal hatred and suffering must exist in similar forms of either until death, or beyond death. Basically it raises the question, what does it mean to be forever and what does it mean to be happy and loved forever or be suffering and hated forever? Borges delves into these topics in two of his stories titled The Immortal, and The Gospel according to Mark. In Jorge Luis Borges’ two stories The Immortal, and the Gospel according to Mark, both stories focus heavily on the subject and meaning of everlasting life and eternal suffering. Both these stories share similar outlooks on immortality, humanity’s everlasting pursuit after it, and their willingness to do anything to achieve it, but though both stories agree on immortality and humanity’s pursuit after it, they are complete opposites on the subject of eternal suffering, because The Immortal shows that eternal suffering exists and we unknowingly experience it every day, whereas the Gospel according to Mark sees eternal suffering as something we know exists and we are constantly trying to avoid it. Both stories touch on the thoughts of everlasting life but in two different senses. In the immortal everlasting life obviously refers to the main character that travels across the entire Southern Mediterranean region in order to find this mystical stream that he had only heard about from a dying soldier. After being separated from his mutinous group of men and nearly killed in a sandstorm, he finds and drinks from a mystical stream giving him eternal life as well as an entire race of men that had already lived near the stream and had being surviving for over a
The word forever is tossed around a lot nowadays. I hear it constantly from couples and friends and family that they will love you “forever”, which no one really thinks much of. Do they mean until death? Or do they mean above and beyond death? And then if someone can love you forever, then the opposite must be true and eternal hatred and suffering must exist in similar forms of either until death, or beyond death. Basically it raises the question, what does it mean to be forever and what does it mean to be happy and loved forever or be suffering and hated forever? Borges delves into these topics in two of his stories titled The Immortal, and The Gospel according to Mark. In Jorge Luis Borges’ two stories The Immortal, and the Gospel according to Mark, both stories focus heavily on the subject and meaning of everlasting life and eternal suffering. Both these stories share similar outlooks on immortality, humanity’s everlasting pursuit after it, and their willingness to do anything to achieve it, but though both stories agree on immortality and humanity’s pursuit after it, they are complete opposites on the subject of eternal suffering, because The Immortal shows that eternal suffering exists and we unknowingly experience it every day, whereas the Gospel according to Mark sees eternal suffering as something we know exists and we are constantly trying to avoid it. Both stories touch on the thoughts of everlasting life but in two different senses. In the immortal everlasting life obviously refers to the main character that travels across the entire Southern Mediterranean region in order to find this mystical stream that he had only heard about from a dying soldier. After being separated from his mutinous group of men and nearly killed in a sandstorm, he finds and drinks from a mystical stream giving him eternal life as well as an entire race of men that had already lived near the stream and had being surviving for over a