Borges's Sense of Reality

When thinking of Jorge Luis Borges’s pieces of literature, all that comes to mind is reality.  It makes me confused and it makes me think, but I like it.  Borges is most famous for his manipulation of reality.  In his works, he is able to create realities that aren’t true, but somehow they are true because he makes you believe they are true.  Borges is also able to rack my brain by messing with time.  Borges can manipulate time lines within a story, but in the end, it all makes a strange connection. One of the most confusing and intellectual Latin American authors, there is a method behind is madness.

The story of “Emma Zunz” is one of Borges’s best examples of a manipulation in reality.  The story describes one daughter’s revenge for the death of her father.  Emma, the main character, is your everyday traditional, modest young girl.  She receives a letter and learns about the death of her father because he drank himself to death.  The cause?  Emma seems to believe that because of her father’s strenuous work as a factory worker, he drank himself to death.  Emma creates a mastermind plan in order to kill the factory owner who she believed killed her father and he is the reason why her father drank himself to death.  First, Emma goes to a women’s club where a doctor examines her and confirms that she is, in fact, a virgin.  Next, she prostitutes her body at a local bar in order to get her “v-card” taken away by a man who can’t speak her language.  Finally, she goes to the factory where her father worked, goes to the office of the owner, and shoots him with his own gun.  However, she is not found guilty for the murder because she tells police that he was trying to rape her and she only killed him in self-defense.  And besides, why would such an innocent young lady do something like that?

Emma is very logical in getting her own revenge for the death of her father.  Emma was able to create her own reality by making herself and everyone around her believe that the factory owner raped her and that’s the reason why she had to kill him.  Emma is able to move on from the situation and believe that that’s how it actually went down and that was what happened.  She disregards that the fact that she wasn’t raped, the factory worker did nothing to her, and that she actually prostituted her body in order to make it look like she was raped. But, to her satisfaction, she received her own revenge.  The author was able to manipulate reality because no one else in the story knew about the prior steps to the murder in order to seek revenge except for Emma.  Everyone on the outside believes in a fake reality that isn’t true.  No one knows the real story.

When connecting this story to my life I think about liars.  There are so many people in this world who lie, but I don’t understand why.  To make themselves feel cool?  So they look better?  I will never know, but I feel that liars sometimes create their own realities for themselves.  They tell so many lies that they actually begin to believe in their own lies.  Not only do they begin to believe in their own lies, but they get there lies all tangled up and twisted and then get busted for telling so many lies.  I was always told that liars don’t make it far in life and I believe it.  One great word of advice would be don’t lie, it can only come back to haunt you in the end.  Unless of course, you’re Emma Zunz.