The Mirror And The Mask Analysis

In Jorge Luis Borges’ “The Mirror & The Mask”, a court poet is asked by the High King of Ireland to create an ode to immortalize their victory against the Norwegians. Moving through the short story, we can begin to see a sort of evolution surrounding the ode as it appears to transform from what is perceived as a skillfully crafted literary masterpiece, to something much more silent and solemn. In analyzing this evolution, we’ll be assisted by Paul Gee’s article, “What is Literacy?” As well as a few points here and there from Trish Kelly’s lecture, “Memorial”.
The first thing we must understand is that the ode is supposed to serve very obviously as a kind of memorial, “something that serves as a focus for memory” (Kelly 23 Sept. 2014); the poem serves to commemorate the Irishmen’s victory over the Norwegians as it gets presented each year on the battle’s anniversary. Secondly, the poems themselves are never revealed to us, leaving much to interpretation. With this understanding we can recognize two things: one, that the story seems to trace the ode’s evolution into a true memorial, and two, that
The right to be remembered in Ancient Egypt was very exclusive, and architects were often even killed to protect the memorials of those with that right (Kelly 23 Sept. 2014). This parallels with the final gift of the dagger and the poet’s suicide, and how, upon hearing the final poem, the King spoke of it as a “sin of having known Beauty, which is a gift forbidden to men” (Jorges, 79), and emphasized the need to keep the words a secret. Recalling how the rewards appear to reflect the respective natures of the poems, the message of death and sworn silence is made all the more obvious in the dagger. However, as we do have to remember the words of the poems are hidden from us as the readers, we can only speculate the