Victoria Gornopolskaya

“The Lottery in Babylon” by Jorge Luis Borges was a very interesting story to read. I enjoyed learning the history of the lottery and how it came to evolve into its present form. I also found it terrifying that all the people of Babylon must participate and share the risk of having awful luck. The premise for this sort of a lottery is chilling to think about, but I feel as though this could never happen in real life. Real people are not quite as unphased as the Babylonians and would definitely take a stand against such a hazardous game of chance. I believe the reason why the Babylonians refuse to put an end to the lottery is because they wouldn’t know how to go about doing so. Since the lottery is managed by a top secret organization of incredibly vital officials, the people would be powerless if they were to go against it. By remaining blissfully ignorant these people allow themselves to be controlled and taken advantage of by this political tool called of a lottery. I believe Borges wrote this piece in order to show how society is always afraid of going against a stronger opponent, in this case, the government.

I thought that the ideas Borges presents in “The Library of Babel” were monumental and not of this time. For a library in Borges’s terms is a hexagon, containing twenty shelves of books arranged in a similar way in each different hexagon. This account is written in the tone of an old man, dying, wondering what the future holds for the literary world as he’s known it. It seems to me that this man is dying for a cause, or perhaps as a result of toiling for that limitless sought-after book. I myself never thought of a library as highly as the narrator of the story does. He believes that the library is an infinite hexagonal realm of knowledge filled with books that hold the key to the future. He speaks of the checkered past when books that were perceived as “nonsense” were forever removed from the shelves. This man has obviously dedicated a great deal of his life for the greater good of the library. I find it tragic that as his life nears its end he condemns himself for never finding the meaning he was searching for in a particular book. However he is optimistic towards the future of the library and sees himself as a necessary piece of the puzzle. Through reading this story I come to the message that there is life after death within the books within libraries that will continuously shape our future