Jorge Luis Borges: "The Lottery in Babylon" and a different End of the World

Some quick background info on Borges might be a good idea before we start getting into a discussion of one of his more famous short stories. Borges was a prolific writer, poet, and essayist, who began publishing his work in Argentina in the early 1920s. Though popular in Spanish speaking countries to a certain extent starting in the 1940s (depending on whether one agreed with his politics or not), he wasn't read and translated widely until the 1960s and 70s, when the Latin American Boom* and magical realism** began to captivate the rest of the world. Many critics say Borges was robbed of a Nobel Prize for his works because of some of his fascist political leanings (he was very anti-Peron and anti-socialist), but his stories and essays have had a great impact on writers throughout the Americas, including here in the USA. His tone, his allusions to other works, and the way he completely makes up references, critics, and pretty much anything else necessary for his stories, sets his body of work very much apart.

In "The Lottery of Babylon," we are introduced to many of the tactics that make so many readers fall in love with his writing. The eerie tone of the first person narration sets the reader immediately on edge, as does the way Borges buries the main plot of the story underneath the allegorical and metaphorical aspects of the story. Our narrator is running away from the Lottery and from the Company that runs it. Babylon, his world, is at its end times, and he is trying to get away as fast as he can. Yet the Company, as a representative of organized religion, or capitalism, or socialism, or any other organization or -ism one could think of to overlay onto the story, occupies the main conflict. And beyond that, this is about World War II and the political and social conflicts in Argentina at the time. Yet even this vision of conflict is, well, conflicting. Has the Company brought about the chaos our narrator flees? Or are the citizens to blame? Is Babylon the work of consensual degradation and madness or is it the work of some menacing overlord who wants to subjugate the masses?

These questions, I believe, are at the center of the story. The text is not here to give us answers, but to force us to ask questions. How does all this actually work? Why has it progressed this way? Who is to blame for this society, a society that goes beyond the usual duplicities and iniquities of the multiple Babylons to which it alludes? This story is about the End of the World because it shows us extremes. This is not anarchy, but chaos; no one is to blame and everyone is to blame. This is the end of humanity as defined by logic, order, and law. Everything we use as a frame of reference is gone - which is also what makes the story harder to read and understand. The footing we usually use to find ourselves within a narrative has been taken away, just as it has been taken from Babylon itself. We are down the rabbit hole, with no rabbit to guide us. And that is the point... when everything is taken away, what is left? When taken down to its core, this story is about human nature, in a way that mirrors so many other stories about the End of the World. How do we react in such extreme situations? What is left when there is nothing left? Does humanity rise to the challenge or fall along the wayside? Is there anything that can keep us human, in our own definition of the term?

The story becomes, then, a version of Schrödinger's cat. We won't know the answers to these questions until we open the box, but in this case, the box cannot be opened, as we have no way to visit Babylon or get any 'real' or 'factual' information about it, so the answers will always be up in the air.

* Though I've linked to the wikipedia page, be careful reading it. Some of its claims are contentious at best and it doesn't go into the kind of detail needed to have a good grasp on the Boom. But it's a start.

** The wikipedia page for magical realism is NOT useful. It completely confuses certain definitions and claims certain authors, including Borges, as magical realists when they aren't. Borges influenced magical realism, but his stories are more in keeping with Poe than someone like García Márquez.

++ On a side note, an intriguing use of the story as a way to understand sports can be found here.