borges! the giver! conexión? quizá!

I've been doing some on-and-off reading of a collection of short fiction stories by Jorge Luis Borges, an Argentine writer who wrote this particular compilation of fictions from the mid forties to the early eighties. Today, during project real, I happened to stumble upon a very short tale (about two pages long) called "The Mirror of Ink". It's about a sorcerer who is in the captivity of a cruel governor of Sudan, Yakub the Afflicted, and attempts to let the governor spare his life by showing him magic tricks. The sorcerer shows the governor an elaborate display in which he pours a pool of ink into the hand of the Afflicted one, and gives him the ability to see anything he wishes reflected in the "mirror of ink" (title! yes! i know!). First, the governor asks to see a wild horse. however, after he witnesses the creature's beauty, he wants to see the whole world and all the wonders of it. This is where i began to connect this story to the giver. remember when jonas experiences his first memory of sledding? he wants to see so much more...but he doesn't know what he's getting himself into. hm.

anyway. back to the story. eager to please his cruel master, the sorcerer shows him all the wonders of the world:

"Thus day by day did he make demands upon my skill, and thus day by day did i show him the appearances of this world. That dead man who i abominate held within his hand all that dead men have seen and all that living men see: the cities, climes, and kingdoms into which this world is divided, the hidden treasures of its center, the ships that sail its seas, its instruments of war and music and surgery, its graceful women, its fixed stars and planets, the colors taken up by the infidel to paint his abominable images...he beheld these things impossible to describe, such as streets illuminated by gaslight and such as the whale that dies when it hears man's voice. Once he commanded me to show him the city men call Europe. I showed him the grandest of its streets and i believe that it was in that rushing flood of men, all dressed in black and many wearing spectacles, that he saw for the first time the Masked One..."

(by the way, the "Masked One" refers to a short story that appears earlier in the book, called "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv". the story is about a veiled man who claims he is a prophet, and that viewing his face will make anyone blind because he was so radiant. he gains many followers and worshippers, but at the end of the story, the people who never believed him to be a saint force him to remove his mask and discover him to be a hideous creature, face mutilated with leprosy. they kill him. he is possibly, according to my theories, a symbol for several things, including vanity, fraud, false hopes...among other things.)

Ok, is anyone seeing a connection to Lois Lowry's The Giver? i am. the cruel governor is very much like jonas - curious, ignorant and oblivious, eager to learn yet not understanding the consequences. the sorcerer is similar to the giver - he has no choice but to satisfy the "receiver" by giving him all the memories possible - even if they're painful.

Which brings me to the second part of the Borges tale - when the governor asks to see images like death - and worse - it turns out that what's keeping the afflicted one constantly gazing into the mirror of ink (title! again!) is his desire to have the masked man that has been constantly appearing in the incantations revealed, then killed. The sorcerer pleads and begs the governor to change his mind, because viewing the masked one's face is a sin, and there would surely be no good to come out of it...yet the afflicted one insists, and the sorcerer has no choice but to oblige.

When the governor finally views the image of the unmasked man, he is shocked and horrified to find that the veiled man possesses the same face as he, the governor. He is hypnotized to the mirror, addicted to its fantastic images, yet now he wishes he could back away and take his eyes off. but he can't. when the sword is finally raised to the masked man's neck, as the governor had wished, and he is killed, the governor collapses, dead as well.

Why does this remind me of the giver so much? there are clearly some HUGE connections in these two texts. i happen to find it fascinating that Borges's tale is told from the giver's point of view as opposed to the receiver's. although jonas does not die at the end of the story due to the memories, he does suffer some severe consequences, and also almost faces death. this short story has given me a whole new perspective on Lois Lowry's book. i find these connections amazing, and slightly disturbing, but fascinating nonetheless. cool.

if you have been tempted to read the entire story of "the mirror of ink", you should. it's a beautifully written piece that is well worth the time taken to read it.

those sick lies contain some truth.

i just finished the giver yesterday and i was totally blown away. the book is about a "utopian" society, even though everybody knows that utopian societies always turn out to be dystopian, so i guess the book is set in a dystopian society. anyway. no one can see color, no one has feelings, and so on. everything is "perfectly organized". Every year, at a special ceremony, the twelve year olds in the community are given assignments, which are the jobs they will hold for their entire lives until they become elders. our main character, jonas, is assigned the incredibly important job of "receiver of memories", in which he must receive memories of color, feelings, etcetera, etcetera...basically, the things that no one else in the community, besides the giver of memories, knows. Jonas is very scared at first, especially because it is such an honored job, and he was told that there would be physical pain involved. when jonas receives the memories, he is shocked at the wonderful colors and other nice memories that no one else gets to experience, and begins to feel rebellious and angry towards the community and how they hold everyone back from both pain and pleasure.

right, so everyone's reading the giver and everyone's getting all weepy-weepy and saying to themselves, oh no, why they killin' babies yo? and yes, there's no doubt that what they are doing is absolutely, totally sick and wrong, but don't you think they might have reasons for isolating the community and keeping them "totally safe"?

my group started talking today about this issue, and the question of why the community is depriving everyone of all the memories. we said that if you wanted to take away pain, you had to take away pleasure, because the two things go hand in hand. if you want to take away heartbreak and sadness, you have to take away love. i don't think jonas really understands how hard it is to find control. the leaders of the community just make it easier by taking away every feeling. the citizens don't know what they're missing because they've never seen or heard of any of the wonderful (or horrendous) things that jonas has seen.

would a world of complete and utter oblivion just be better? would it be better to not have feelings, or things to trouble you, or complete fairness? the citizens of the community seem to think so.

and think about what jonas finds when he escapes-wilderness, complete lack of food, cold, and no shelter. this is exactly what the community was keeping him from! what's good about starvation? many people would argue that you need to have memories and knowledge of fear, and courage, and color, but why? in a perfect world, you'll never be faced with anything dangerous. why do you need color to survive? why do you need art, or music? these people don't care about adding excitement or interest to their lives. all they care about is eating, and working, and sleeping, and staying alive. all those things are taken care of.

what's the point of living, though, if you have no interests? isn't the point of life to experience many different things, to impact other peoples' lives in a dramatic, important way? the people in this "perfect world" are living utterly pointless lives. they're living in a box, totally closed off from the entire world. why do they live anyway? they are useless beings who shove all of their issues and memories and strong desires that could "cause problems" on this one poor, decrepit old man who can barely contain them without having extreme mental breakdowns. it's unfair to dump all your problems on one person, or group of people, at that.

the point of living is to experience pain, and experience problems, and experience the hardships of life. the point of life is to experience every single thing the world has to offer, otherwise, why would we be living on earth anyway? life means to experience joy and love and even the tiniest things like color. everything life throws at you, you've got to absorb, take in, and simply have that experience.

the characters in the giver are being controlled like robots, living pointless, stupid lives, and wasting their time on earth. they aren't experiencing life, and the world, and the wonders and pains of it all. they are not living, and only jonas and the giver have the power to end it all. the citizens know that. they just don't want to live because they're scared of life.