24 pages • 48 minutes read
Jorge Luis BorgesThe Aleph
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1945A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Borges
Borges is the narrator and protagonist of “The Aleph” and shares the name of the story’s author. Borges’s attributes are as enigmatic as the details of his relationship with the deceased Beatriz—his name is not revealed until just before he views the Aleph. Borges admits that his intent to remain unchanging in a changing universe is “melancholy vanity,” which could describe his character as a whole. Disillusioned and sentimental, he concocts the measured pleasure of his annual visits to Beatriz’s family as a bomb. His description of these visits as “melancholy and vainly erotic” (119) says much about Borges the narrator. Through his reactions to Argentino, who is in contrast fully rendered by description, readers see Borges’s vain and melancholy disposition in action.
When Argentino begins his overwrought poetic expressions, Borges does not hold back his criticism of the man who is revealed as his romantic rival. Borges is a writer too, author of a work called The Sharper’s Cards, which the narrator mentions as not having received a single vote in the contest Argentino placed second in. Borges the author wrote an unpublished collection of essays by the same name.
Carlos Argentino Daneri
The first cousin of Borges’s deceased friend Beatriz, Argentino is described as a “pink, substantial, gray-haired man of refined features” (119) who works in “some sort of subordinate position in an illegible library on the outskirts toward the south of the city” (119). This obscure detail communicates both Borges’s cutting judgment of the man as well as his belief in Argentino’s mediocrity. The narrator further describes him as “ineffectual” and “utterly insignificant.” The narrator sums up his disdain for Argentino by stating, “He is full of pointless analogies and idle scruples” (120).
Borges’s judgment is verified throughout the story, as Argentino can hardly utter a remark that is not pretentious, pompous, or soaked in melodrama. His reading from The Earth is only slightly less distasteful than the analyses of each line that follows. The fact that he goes on to garner accolades for his work reads as a critique from Borges (the author) of the literary establishment of his time. No direct mention is made of Argentino’s romantic relationship with Beatriz. The surprising revelation of Beatriz’s letters comes near the end of the story and is punctuated by Argentino’s assertion that Borges mind his own business.
Beatriz Viterbo
Described in the first sentence as having faced her mortal illness without having “for an instant stooped to either sentimentality of fear” (118), Beatriz, though deceased, is the driving force of the story. She is believed to be a representation of Estela Canto, a love interest of Borges (the author) to whom he dedicated the story. Beatriz is revealed to readers in photographs, brief descriptions, and finally in the Aleph.
Beatriz appears as content and vivacious, posing at jockey clubs and carnivals. The narrator emphasizes a sense of independence that would further liken her to Estela Canto. He immediately follows a mention of her wedding photo with one taken just after her divorce. Not until Borges views the Aleph do both her letters to her cousin and then her decomposing body show her as a complete, mortal human being. The story’s characterization devices focus on the many photographs of her and the narrator’s descriptions, but the deeper truth about Beatriz is revealed by the Aleph.
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By Jorge Luis Borges
