The Library of Babel

Jorge Luis Borges, 1944

short_story

Quadrant Scores

Time Structure
LinearFractured
Pacing
Action-DrivenObservational
Threat Scale
IndividualSystemic
Protagonist Fate
VictoryAssimilation
Conflict Style
Western CombatKishōtenketsu
Price Type
PhysicalIdeological
Todorov's Stages
equilibrium
Description of the starting status quo.
disruption
The inciting incident or protocol failure.
recognition
When the protagonist realizes the disruption.
repair
The attempt to fix or survive it.
new equilibrium
The new, altered status quo.

Structural Analysis

1. Protocol Fiction Mapping (Summer of Protocols)#

  • Render a Rule:
  • Rehearse a Failure Mode:
  • Reveal a Human Insight:

2. Actantial Model (A.J. Greimas)#

  • Subject:
  • Object:
  • Sender (Destinator):
  • Receiver (Destinatee):
  • Helper:
  • Opponent:

3. Todorov's Equilibrium Model#

  • See YAML Frontmatter for stage breakdown.

4. The Freytag Pyramid#

  • Exposition:
  • Climax:

5. Propp's Morphology of the Folktale#

  • Applicable Narratemes:

6. Genette's Narrative Discourse#

  • Order / Duration / Focalization:

7. The Monomyth / Hero's Journey#

  • Subversions:

8. Dan Harmon's Story Circle#

  • The Take (The Price Paid):

9. Save the Cat! Beat Sheet#

  • Pacing Deviations:

10. Kishōtenketsu (Four-Act Structure)#

  • Applicability:

11. The Three-Act Structure#

  • Plot Points:

12. Lévi-Strauss's Binary Oppositions#

  • Primary Binary:
  • Secondary Binary:
  • The Mediator:

13. Cognitive Estrangement (Suvin / Shklovsky)#

  • The Familiar Concept:
  • The Estranging Mechanism:
  • The Cognitive Shift:

14. Bakhtin's Chronotope#

  • The Spatial Matrix:
  • The Temporal Flow:
  • The Point of Intersection:

15. Aristotelian Poetics#

  • Hamartia:
  • Peripeteia:
  • Anagnorisis:

16. Jungian Archetypal Analysis#

  • The Persona:
  • The Shadow:
  • The Anima/Animus:
  • The Trickster:

17. Genette's Transtextuality#

  • Intertextuality:
  • Paratextuality:
  • Metatextuality:

Characters9

The NarratorAging librarian and author

An aging librarian who has traveled the Library in his youth, administers a hexagon, and is now preparing to die, leaving behind his written testament.

my fatherI
The chief of one of the upper hexagonsHistorical librarian

A librarian from five hundred years ago who discovered a book containing almost two pages of homogeneous lines.

The traveling deciphererLinguist

An expert who initially suggested the homogeneous lines found by the chief were written in Portuguese.

A librarian of geniusHistorical scholar

The philosopher who discovered the fundamental law of the Library: that it is total and contains all possible combinations of twenty-two orthographic symbols.

This philosopher
The inquisitorsOfficial searchers

Exhausted individuals who travel the hexagons leafing through books in search of disgraceful words, without expecting to actually find anything.

official searchers
The PurifiersFanatical sect

A destructive group driven by an ascetic rage who invaded hexagons to eliminate 'worthless' books, hoping to eventually find the magical books of the Crimson Hexagon.

fanatics
The Book ManMythological figure

A legendary, god-like librarian rumored to have found and examined the perfect compendium of all other books.

Him
Letizia Alvarez de ToledoTheorist

A theorist mentioned in a footnote who observed that the vast Library is pointless and proposed a single volume with infinitely thin pages.

CavalieriMathematician

A historical figure mentioned in a footnote who stated that every solid body is the super-position of an infinite number of planes.