Jorge Luis Borges 'The Circular Ruins'

Jorge Luis Borges was seen as a surrealist writer. He wrote through the perspective of dreams for most of his writings by trying to change reality into another meaning. He is a surrealist writer that had many experiences in life that affected his work and also used fictional ways of writing to tell stories that were actually true. Imagination, visions, and dreams were all used to shape his writing (“Literary Notes”). His short story “The Circular Ruins” is one of the best examples, because the whole story is told through a dream. There were many factors that played a part in shaping Borges into the writer that he became. The politics he was involved in, the sudden death of his father, his severe head trauma, and completely losing his vision, is what made Jorge Luis Borges come up with his creative short story “The Circular …show more content…
His short story was included in the 1941 collection The Garden of Forking Paths. Borges’ short story starts with an injured soldier fleeing Persia to a circular ruin around the Northern area. This man rests and wakes up to find that all of his wounds are now magically healed. He falls asleep again in hopes of creating a man, from his dream, who will be brought into the real world. The man spent days and nights dreaming of this imaginative man that he was trying to create for himself. After days of dreaming, the man develops insomnia and finds it impossible to not only dream, but sleep. A few weeks go by, and the dreaming man finally finishes his creation. The dreaming man teaches his creation for two years and sends him to the ruins downstream. The dreaming man eventually begins to feel tired and weak. He fears that the his creation will find out that he is not like normal people, and will discover that he is a product of somebody else 's dream. The story ends with a twist in that the dreaming man discovers that he also is a product of somebody else’s