Jorge Luis Borges 'The Library Of Babel'

Humanity has always been defined by our love and our endless pursuit of knowledge.. Most of (if not all) of humanity’s greatest achievements have been obtained due to our never-ending need to know about our universe and everything in it, including ourselves. The study of different sciences, exploring space, learning medicine, attending school - these are all different ways in which we see that, as humans, we strive to learn as much as we can. It’s simply a part of human nature to crave knowledge. We spend our lives chasing education and knowledge, and ultimately, it shapes who we are - both as an individual and as a species. In Jorge Luis Borges’ The Library of Babel, Borges illustrates a universe that consists of an enormous, possibly infinite

The narrator comments on this doomed search, nothing that “like all men of the Library,” he traveled when he was young, journeying from hexagonal room to hexagonal room to search for a book that might explain where he was and why he was there - in a sense, he was seeking knowledge about his very own existence and role within the Library. The narrator anticipates dying without finding this knowledge, most likely only “a few leagues from” the bookshelves by “which [he] was born” (112). If one recalls that the narrator states at the very beginning of this story that the Library is the universe, this passage can take on an entirely new meaning (112). If one takes the word “Library” and replaces it with the word “universe”, we can read this as a man who, like everyone in the universe, journeyed throughout the land trying to find his purpose in life and why he was placed in the universe. Sadly, he believes that he won’t find the answer to this question, and will eventually die somewhere close to where he was born. This could very well be seen as a modern-day commentary on how, as humans, we are innately curious about the world we live in, although we can never discover the answers to everything we seek to know. When viewed through this lens, this introduces an interesting perspective on mankind’s search for knowledge, and also serves to show the reader that this search for knowledge about one’s role in the universe is often pointless and ends with an unsatisfactory