by Ian Livingston-Caneiro

Created on: January 02, 2011   Last Updated: January 03, 2011

An Examination of Reality According to Borges’ example of “The Circular Ruins”

In “The Circular Ruins”, Borges asks the reader to question whether their reality is any more real than the world created in fiction and art, and uses the example of a man who is created by a fictionalized author, who in turn realizes he has been created by Borges. 

In “The Circular Ruins," the main character decides to dream up a fictional character. His dream takes up all his energy and time, and he dreams every imaginable detail of the dream character until he becomes real to the dreamer. “Almost at once, he had a dream of a beating heart. He dreamed it throbbing, warm, secret. It was the size of a closed fist, a darkish red in the dimness of a human body still without a face or sex. With anxious love he dreamed it for fourteen lucid nights. Each night he perceived it more clearly” (Borges 58). The dreamer dreams the entire man, but cannot make him a conscious being, and prays to the God of Fire, whose circular temple he has stayed in during the story, to bring his character to life. “This manifold god revealed to him that its earthly name was Fire, that there in the circular temple (and in others like it) sacrifices had once been made to it, that it had been worshiped, and that through its magic the phantom of the man’s dreams would be wakened to life in such a way that –except for Fire itself and the dreamer- every being in the world would accept him as a man of flesh and blood” (Borges 59). 

The dreamed man awakens and becomes real, but soon discovers he cannot be burned by fire, and realizes he is just the creation of a mortal being. The dreamer in turn, realizes that he too is just the creation of another imperfect being after a drought causes another fire to leave him unburned, and the story ends with the reader not knowing who the creator of the dreamer really is. “In relief, in humiliation, in terror, he understood that he, too, was an appearance, that someone else was dreaming him” (Borges 62). It is clear that the creator of the dreamer is another imperfect creation, as his own creation, the dreamer, is incomplete. “There are a number of hints in The Circular Ruins that the son, a young man with sharp features akin to those of his dreamer”, is a double of the magician. The magician, in turn, is a double of still another creator” (Soud 3). 

“En ‘Las

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