Death Compass And The South Analysis

Jorge Luis Borges uses diction in specific sections of his short stories, specifically the opening and closing scenes to affect the reader’s experience of these moments in the stories.
Specifically looking at Death and the Compass and The South we, as readers, can have an improved perception of important events in these short stories. It is also easier to go back and read the stories and pick up on many elements of foreshadowing in specific sections of each story based on clues left behind by the author. These sections also contain motifs, such as labyrinths, life as a dream, repetitions, and cyclical time, which help the reader draw connections between the different sections of the story.
Death and the Compass tells the story of a detective,
In this short story, it may be difficult to identify motifs and elements of foreshadowing by just reading it once, but if the reader goes back to the beginning it is easy to see important plot details that were overlooked. The first element of foreshadowing is seen in the first paragraph of the text, Which says “...But he did divine the secret morphology of the vicious series as well as the participation of Red Scharlach”(Borges 129). Though this is very discreet, the killer is named within the first paragraph of the text and we also learn Lonnrot deciphers the pattern of murders taking place. The quote tells the readers of the future events that will happen in the short story, such as that there is in fact a pattern and order to the murders and that Lonnrot, the detective is able to crack the code. However, many elements are left out, like the fact that
Lonnrot would not be able to see that he was the next victim. Another element of foreshadowing is the shape of the rhombu, which makes an appearance quite often throughout the story. It is significant because Lonnrot believed the murders formed a triangular shape, however, in reality the shape was actually a rhombus and if Lonnrot had discovered that he would be able to
Cyclical time is also a prevalent motif in this short story as the detective constantly circles back to the details of previous murders in order recognize the pattern they follow.
Just like Death and the Compass, The South contains many motifs throughout different sections of the story as well. The plot of this short story shows the life of Dahlmann, who lives a rather boring life as a librarian, we see this as he gets extremely excited about a new book and ends up hitting his head and sustaining a pretty serious injury from it. He also has ancestors who were Gauchos, which were basically Argentinian cowboys. He is very interested in this culture, but never actively pursued exploring it until after his injury heals and he decides to finally visit his grandfather’s ranch. During this process he is in an altercation with a couple drunk men in a bar and ends up dying in a knife fight, however, the reader is responsible in creating their own ending by making a claim that he died in the knife fight or in the hospital. His dreams are a very important motif that is seen in different sections of the story, towards the beginning he