Death Worksheet

Title: Death and the Compass                          Author: Jorge Luis Borges (Argentina)

Year of Publication: 1942                               Genre/Sub-genre: Short Story/Mystery/Detective 

Language Style: erudite, convoluted, sophisticated, suspence 

Tone: Dark, Suspenseful, thrilling, adventurous, misdirection, misterious.

Place/Setting:

• City:
• Hotel du Nord:
• the paint shop:
• Liverpool House:
• villa Tristle-le-Roy:

Social Class: blue collar, upper-middle, high class. 

Time Frame: 3 months, from December 3 - March 3, "Nine days and nine nights..." (113) "Three years ago" (113) 

Characters:

• Eric Lonnrot: Strange
• Inspector Treviranus:
• Red Scharlach: the Dandy 
• Gryphius:
• Black Finnegan: Irish (108)
• Daniel Simon Azevedo: (108)
• Rabbi Yarmolinsky: (105)

Ambiance: dark, gothic, cold, dim, Hostile, secretive, intellectual, methodically, logical, riddle, maze 

Themes/Motifs: Religion, repition, symmetry, challenges, numbers, 4, symbolism, honor, pride. repetition, numbers

Proper Nouns

• Places: Tristle-le-Roy (105), Hotel du Nord (105), Liverpool House on the Rue de Toulon (108), Tue de Toulon (110)
• People: Auguste Dupin (105), Tetrarch of Galilee (106), Alexander of Macedonia 107), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher), Carpathians (105), Ernst Palast (author)
• Books: Vindication of the Kabbalah, Study of the Philosophy of the Baal Shem, The Martyr (110), Pentateuch (106), History of the Hasidic Sect (106), La Croix de L’Epee, Tetragrammaton, Judische Zeitung (107), Leusden’s Philologus Hebraeo-Graecus (110), Baedeker (German travel book, 110), Congress of Hermits
• Religion: Jewish (107), Hebraic (107), Christian, Persians, Hasidim (107), Yiddish (109), God, Pious (107)
• Languages/Nationalities: Hungarian and Latin (109), German, Greek (111)

Israel Baal Shem Tobh,, Ginzberg (108),, ,, , Podolsk to the Third Talmudic Congress (105),

Senses

• Smell: “incessant odor of eucalyptus trees” (105),
• Sight: “Stared at them in fear” (106), “gave it an indignant look” (110), “He saw dogs, he saw a flatcar on a siding, he saw the line of the horizon, he saw a pale horse drinking stagnant water out of a ditch” (111)
• Sound: “the squeal of rusted iron surprised him” (112)
• Touch: “at a touch, the ancient petals crumbled to dust” (112)

Symbolic Images: "dark muddy river"  ), “Eternity, may be found-that is to say, the immediate knowledge of everything under the sun that will be, that is, and that was.” (107), ,“),  “flows a dark muddy river” (111), the description of the house and all of its peculiarities (112), “a stain of light led him to a window” (112), “a murder in the north, others in the east and west, demanded a fourth murder in the south” (115), diamond-shape, red, greem and yellow

Symbolic Elements:

Colors: 

• “dressed in black” (109),
• "costumes of red, green, and yellow lozenges” (109), 
• “the diamond-shaped panes; they were red, green, and yellow” (113),
• “rose-colored walls that in some way seemed to reflect the garish sunset” (108)
• The yellow moon and yellow slipcovers (112)

Number 4:

• "The crime was fourfold" (115)
• "diamond shaped panes"
• “the rectangular mirador” (111),

 Number 3:

• "The thirty-third chapter" (110) Jesus was 33 when he died.
• The first, second, and last letter of the Name has been uttered (107, 08, 09)
• “the perfect sides of an equilateral and mystical triangle” (110),
• “third of December” (105),
• “Third Talmudic Congress” (105),
• “survived three years of war” (105),
• “three thousand years of oppression and pogroms (106),
• “at three minutes past eleven in the morning” (106),
• “three legged cats” (106),
• “in three columns” (107),
• “January third” (108),
• “February third” (108),
• “the three exchanged” (109),
• “thirty-third chapter” (110),
• “three months…three jews” (110),
• “threefold mystery” (110),
• “third of March (110),
• "'In your maze there are three lines too many,...'" (115)

Oddities: : One inspector is a Christian while the other is an atheist (107), “Hebrew scholars explain that imperfect cipher by a mystic fear of even numbers;” (107)

Cultural Elements: the importance of religion, the Carnival season, Evening papers, a coupe car

Literary Devices (give examples)

• Personification: “the city fell away in shables; the sky grew…” (108) “The house seemed endless and growing” (112)
• Simile: “as empty as dawn” (111), “a sadness as great as that hatred” (113)
• Amplification: "Erik Lonnrot smiled and rad to him with perfect gravity an underlined passage from the thirty-third chapter of the Philologus..." (110)
• Foreshadowing:

Intriguing Quote:

• "To the south of the city of my story flows a dark muddy river, polluted my the waste of tanneries and sewers."(pg 111)
• “The next time I kill you, “said Scharlach,
• “I promise you such a maze which is made up of a single straight line and which is invisible and unending.” He moved back a few steps. Then, taking careful aim, he fired.’ (115)- he killed him but i wonder what he actually meant.
• "He looked off at the trees and the sky broken into dark diamonds of red, green, and yellow." (115) - I thought this quote has an interesting type of imagery about the sky and diamonds.

Foreign or Unfamiliar Terms:

Dictionary Work

• culmination: highest or climactic point of something, especially attained after a long time.
• ephemeral (113)- lasting a very short time