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The Lottery in Babylon

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:

Characters6

The NarratorExile and Former Proconsul/Slave

A Babylonian who has experienced extreme vicissitudes of fortune, including being a proconsul, a slave, and invisible, and who is now far from Babylon, hurriedly dictating his account before his ship sails.

The CompanyOmnipotent organization

The secretive, all-powerful corporation that controls the Lottery, orchestrates the destiny of all Babylonians, and is the subject of numerous blasphemous heresies.

CHypothetical individual

A hypothetical person whose murder in a tavern serves as an example of a complex outcome orchestrated by multiple drawings of the Lottery.

BHypothetical individual

A hypothetical person whose mysterious apotheosis illustrates the intricate and inspired consequences of thirty or forty combined Lottery drawings.

Antoninus HeliogabalusRoman Emperor

A historical figure raised in Asia Minor who wrote out fates on seashells for his dinner guests, functioning as a distant echo of the Babylonian Lottery.

Heliogabalus
AElius LampridiusHistorian

The biographer who wrote the Life of Antoninus Heliogabalus, recording the emperor's lottery-like distribution of fates to his guests.

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Theme of the Traitor and the Hero
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