Borges and Himself: The Use of Mirrors as a Tool of Torture

It seems to me that Borges is almost afraid of mirrors. He uses them so much in his work that it’s almost like he’s confronting a fear that he has – perhaps a fear of facing himself or the fear of the reflection. Where these fears would stem from, I’m not sure. He had quite the interesting life, and there was quite a bit that went on in the course of it – two world wars, Korea and Vietnam. He just missed the fall of the Berlin wall, but he lived in the Cold War era and Soviet USSR era, and had to deal a lot with the fear of communism and/or Marxism.

Or maybe it has nothing to do with the fact that there was so much violence that was happening around him. Maybe it had more to do with the fact that he was going blind for most of his life, and the fear stems from the fact that he’ll no longer to see the world, himself, or anything reflected.

What makes me feel ‘squirmy’ or ‘shivery’ about his works – especially the ones that have to do with mirrors – is that they make me feel like there’s something on the other side of it. It makes me hesitant to look into one when I really sit down and think about it. Why? Mostly because I’m scared that my reflection would become independent of me – sort of like those shadows in the old Bugs Bunny cartoons. (That, and there’s this old legend - never let a baby look in a mirror before they were a year old because the other side of the mirror would steal their soul. Call me silly, but I’m superstitious; I still throw salt over my left shoulder, knock on wood, and spin three times after burying someone. )

The last surviving caretaker was a giant owl who could read minds and speak telepathically. He knew where everything was and was able to survive by flying around and eating the mice that tried to eat the tomes - another old legend.

They say that when once sense goes, the others become even stronger. What if, because Borges was losing his sight, his imagination – which for a writer is a sense – because even greater, and he didn’t need a mirror to see reflections. I have this crazy thought that sometimes our dreams are really reality and reality is really our dreams; the mirror is the connection between the two. And Borges really only reinforces that idea. And it really creeps me out.

And then, of course, there’s the silly child’s game of Bloody Mary or Candyman – which are really kind of the same thing. There’s always subtle differences, but it usually involves a mirror and a dark room, whispering the name three times in succession, and blowing out a candle. When I was younger in school, the bathrooms were set up so that there was one row of sinks along one wall and another along the opposite wall so that everything was reflected. I was with a couple friends (we were in probably fifth or sixth grade), turned off the light, and said the “curse”. I wasn’t paying much attention because I didn’t think that it was going to work, so I bent down to put some papers in my folder. I didn’t realize that they had already said everything, and I stood up really fast and they all screamed. I was reflected in the light of the flashlight (one of the reasons why I thought it wouldn’t work – it was supposed to be a candle) between the two walls of mirrors and it made it look like I was reflected in all the mirrors. Even though I don’t really like mirrors too much, I understand what a beautiful tool they can be. And Borges really uses them to his advantage in that aspect.

Like in The Library of Babel, he uses a mirror to confuse the concept of infinity and finite. In the one about Tlon, Borges uses it to make a man question his intentions or himself. And because of the ways he uses a mirror – something that we take for granted because we’re so used to them and we tend to forget about them, it really becomes a tool of torture, of horror. It’s like it would be a really disturbing movie where the main character would go crazy. I can’t put it any better than that, really. It would be one of those psychological horror movies. It would leave movie watchers with the feeling they had like after watch the South Korean film OldBoy, which was taken from a Japanese manga of the same name.

I get creeps just thinking about it, really. Someone should turn his stories into a movie. It would actually be a pretty big hit.