Julie Morvitz

I thoroughly enjoyed The Other. It wasn’t confusing to me, and I liked the idea that Borges meets his younger self. I also liked that they were unsure of how they were actually meeting- his younger self thought it was a dream, while his older self thought it was actually happening. Many of Borges’ themes were apparent in the story, and clearly that we didn’t know whether the story was reality or fantasy. One or both of them could be dreaming, or they could be in a fantasy world where these events actually do happen.
I cannot say that I liked The Mirror and the Mask quite as much. Poetry has always confused me to some extent, and this story involved a lot of poetry. I understood the main idea of the story, that the poet came every year to the king and read him a poem, but I wasn’t sure what the gifts the king gave him meant. I also don’t understand why the poet couldn’t read the poem at the end, or why the king gave him a dagger which he killed himself with.