29 pages • 58 minutes read
Jorge Luis BorgesThe Library of Babel
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1941A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Irony
Jorge Luis Borges employs irony—a contrast between expectation and reality, or what seems to be and what is—as a tool to accentuate the inherent contradictions and perplexities enmeshed within the Library’s fabric. Although the Library appears boundless, offering the promise of limitless knowledge, it ultimately delivers no discernible or quantifiable truths: “For every rational line or forthright statement there are leagues of senseless cacophony, verbal nonsense, and incoherency” (Paragraph 5). Profound wisdom remains obscured amid the ceaseless proliferation of nonsensical text, underscoring the irony that the quest for enlightenment often leads to encounters with meaningless and haphazard data. In a paradoxical twist, the existence of every conceivable book, encompassing both thoughtful and trivial content, paradoxically diminishes the significance of each, as most are comprised of arbitrary combinations of letters, punctuation marks, and paragraphs.
The story’s irony is particularly striking when we examine how the Library is depicted as a divine and flawless entity, a portrayal that directly challenges the conventional concept of a benevolent and all-knowing deity. This subtle critique of the notion of an all-encompassing God becomes evident as the librarian implies that the Library deliberately withholds information from its worshippers. This raises profound existential questions about the ultimate value of religious experiences and the theocratic nature of the Library itself. As the librarian muses, “There is no combination of characters one can make—dhcmrlchtdj, for example—that the divine Library has not foreseen and that in one or more of its secret tongues does not hide a terrible significance” (Paragraph 13).
Setting
The Library presents a surreal and profoundly unsettling environment that profoundly affects the characters within the narrative. Its sheer size and architectural design defy the laws of physics and reason, immersing individuals in a fantastic and ethereal realm that transcends human understanding. The hexagonal galleries, endlessly repeating bookshelves, and staircases extending upward and downward form an Escher-like landscape that challenges conventional perceptions of space and structure. This architectural marvel aligns with the concept of a megastructure, a man-made construct of such immense scale and complexity that it overwhelms the cognitive faculties of those within it.
The Library’s contents, encompassing every conceivable book and language, venture into the realm of the fantastical, where the boundaries between reality and fantasy become blurred. Borges skillfully crafts an atmosphere steeped in surrealism, inviting readers to navigate this peculiar and dreamlike domain. Here, the pursuit of knowledge takes on an eerie and nightmarish quality.
Footnotes
The Library of Babel concludes with a metafictional revelation by adding a footnote on the story’s last page. In this footnote, it is implied that the extensive Library itself is superfluous, and all that is truly needed is a single volume:
Letizia Alvarez de Toledo has observed that the vast Library is pointless; strictly speaking, all that is required is a single volume, of the common size, printed in nine- or ten-point type, that would consist of an infinite number of infinitely thin pages. (In the early seventeenth century, Cavalieri stated that every solid body is the superposition of an infinite number of planes.) Using that silken vademecum would not be easy: each apparent page would open into other similar pages; the inconceivable middle page would have no ‘back’ (Paragraph 16).
The quote reflects the story’s overarching theme of paradox and irony, as even this single volume with infinite pages would present its own challenges and absurdities. Each page would lead to more similar pages, creating an endless recursion without any discernible beginning or end. This idea underscores the futility of trying to find order, meaning, or simplicity within the Library’s chaotic expanse, which seems determined to resist meaning and significance in any way it can.
There are several other footnotes throughout the story, some offering further explanation or evidence for arcane concepts, others filling in emotionally charged details of the narrator’s life experience:
In earlier times, there was one man for every three hexagons. Suicide and diseases of the lung have played havoc with that proportion. An unspeakably melancholy memory: I have sometimes traveled for nights on end, down corridors and polished staircases, without coming across a single librarian (114).
Taken together, the effect of these footnotes is to add to the sense of textual overabundance. The narrator’s commentary on the Library, before it has even been read, is already spawning its own metacommentary.
Related Titles
By Jorge Luis Borges
