Blog 8

Re-reading the story The South was helpful in many ways, mainly because it helped me think of more meanings that Jose Luis Borges might have had in writing it. Initially, I believed that the story after Dahlmann was in the sanitarium was all imagined. I thought it was supposed to be like Dahlmann either died or was still asleep at the sanitarium and he was just imagining everything that happened. But after rereading it, it was brought to my attention about all the things that were in Dahlmann's past, like the cat, the shopkeeper that looked like the nurse, all the billboards and such, and him returning to his ranch. After noticing those objects and events, I began to believe that the meaning was supposed to be that the past has a way of coming back into your life, like the phrase "history repeats itself". This also just seemed to me that the whole story is just a major case of deja vu for Dahlmann. Now, after seeing all these similarities between before and after the sanitarium in the story, I wondered if all this is supposed to be Dahlmann's life flash before his eyes, like he is going to die during surgery at the sanitarium. As if this event that occurred during his trip to his ranch all happened in the past, and, because this is the event that comes to mind before he died, is the event in which he wished to die in, so that he would die a heroic death instead of during surgery at a sanitarium because of an injury he got after banging his head. I would also very much appreciate it if Jorge Luis Borges would have finished this story because, while the open ending leads to alternative endings, I would like to know what Borges would have happen to Dahlmann at the end and whether or not my beliefs on the meaning of the story are true.