House Of Asterion

House of Asterion, written by Jorge Luis Borges, is a short story that takes a first person point of view of a Minotaur named Asterion. The story is about Asterion’s life style and how he occupies his time. However the reader doesn’t find out that Asterion is a Minotaur until the very end of the story. Without this key piece of information the reader cannot view Asterion as a regular person. Another important part of the story that is left out is how his house is labyrinth. This again makes it easier for the reader to think of Asterion as human. By taking a first person point of view it makes it easier for the reader to humanize the Minotaur, and at the same time it lets the readers imagination wonder when trying to imagine the things described
Throughout the story Asterion is describing everything in his life, and because of the way he does this it makes him sound like a regular person. He talks about going into the streets and how people hide from him and how “some climbed up on the sty lobate of the temple of axes”. (Borges 280) When it Asterion describes these things it makes the reader feel sad for him because he is alone in the world and no one likes him. If the Borges had told the reader beforehand that Asterion was a Minotaur then it would make sense why the people reacted the way they did. Not only does this make the reader sympathize with Asterion it makes them wonder what could possibly be wrong with him. Another thing that makes the reader view him as human when Asterion describes how he spends his free time. The “games” Asterion plays with himself make him seem almost like a child, he does things like “run like a charging ram through the halls of stone until I tumble dizzily to the ground”. (Borges 180) By describing these games Borges is laying the foundation for how the reader can view Asterion’s life style. However Asterion spends almost all of his time his house so it limits the things he can
Borges also manages to trick the reader into viewing a Minotaur as a human being with his creative descriptions of Asterion’s home and lifestyle. This is also accomplished because Borges does not directly tell the reader that Asterion is a Minotaur until the end of the story, at which point all of the odd things Asterion has described begin to make sense. Never the less the story is very thought provoking and pushes the reader to picture everything in their mind and try picture Asterion based on the character traits that they are given. It is crucial the story that it is told in first person otherwise it would lose its creativity and make it harder for the reader to picture Asterion as a