Blog #8- The Intruder

The Intruder by Jorge Luis Borges is a short story that becomes very barbaric and immoral to the reader. The Nilson brothers of Turdera are unapproachable and notorious men in the community  known as “drovers, horse thieves, teamsters, and once in a while, professional gamblers. Cristian, the older brother, used a woman named Juliana Burgos as his servant, sex slave, and more importantly, the woman that he unadmittedly loved. Of course,  however, his younger brother Eduardo fell in love with her as well. After this is revealed in the beginning paragraphs, Borges begins to reveal odd details and an unfathomable plot follows. Instead of the two brothers killing each other, they decide to share Juliana. After figuring out that the other brother is jealous of the other because they both love her, they decide to sell her to a whorehouse. This seems to fix the problem, until both brothers find each other going back to see her. As if this isn’t an odd enough plot by now, Borges really mixes things up when Cristian and Eduardo buy her back and the kill her one night and leave her body for the vultures to eat. Borges’s purpose seems to change throughout the short story until I looked back after I finished reading. In the beginning, it seems that it will be a story about the jealousy between the two brothers that will have a deadly ending. Then, after they sell Juliana, I thought maybe Borges would make this story about the brotherhood and loyalty of Cristian and Eduardo. After reading, however, this is an untypical plot  because usually the fate of the brothers in a story like this is death. Instead, this odd and uncomfortable story becomes about the relationship between the brothers and the intrusion that Juliana causes.  Rather than getting rid of “the other man”, they get rid of the intrusion- Juliana herself.  Although this very brutal and inhumane, it makes this short story intriguing to read because of its nonrealistic plot. Also, this story arises the question of Borges as an author himself. He clearly is not a feminist, using a communal woman to connect two men physically and emotionally.  Obviously not identifying with the purpose of this story, yet finding it intriguing to read, I am left speechless by the cruelty of the whole situation. The ending sentence, “One more link bound them now-the woman they had cruelly sacrificed and their common need to forget her”, makes me think that Borges wrote this short story to draw attention to the barbaric natural instincts of man. 

Blog #7

After finishing The Secret Agent, I am able to look back and analyze how and when my reading changed. Although this was a challenging book in the beginning, the plot slowly picked up speed and many things began to happen very quickly. The chapter when Chief Inspector Heat has a conversation with Winnie, and Winnie finds out that her own husband played a role in Stevie's death, is in my opinion the best chapter in the book. Not only does Winnie, a character who is thought to be innocent and minor, becomes a cold-blooded murderer of Verloc. This was a major plot twist that I did not expect, and its irony allowed this chapter and the book as a whole to become extremely powerful. Winnie murders a murderer, revealing a major theme throughout the novel. I did not expect Winnie to become such an authoritative and influential character because of her lack of action throughout the early part of the book. From this point on, the action and suspense keeps building. She runs into Ossipon and convinces him to run away with her with the money she received from Verloc. As we find out, he only pretends to agree until she boards the train and he jumps off last minute with her money. In addition, Winnie’s suicide just adds chaos to the whole situation.

This chapter is not only a major plot twist, but it is the most important one in which Conrad reveals themes about the book and his view of society in the early twentieth century. As if plotting to bomb the Greenwich Observatory wasn’t enough of a statement about society, Conrad develops a plot in which there is lack of trust, loyalty, and morality. Although this theme is dispersed throughout this book in small parts, Conrad is able to convey this theme in one climactic chapter. Violence and death become prominent motifs in the book as well, and they become very important when they transform characters like Winnie and Ossipon into corrupt citizens, making these characters dynamic.



It is because of this chapter that I not only was able to connect everything together, but it drastically changed my opinion of the novel. I was not a fan of this particular book in the beginning, but once I understood what Conrad was doing with the plot, I greatly enjoyed finishing the novel. The book was very blasé until this chapter, then it suddenly catapulted into this very meaningful and forceful book. The fact that Conrad has the ability to do this and change a reader’s opinion of the book as a whole a single chapter makes him a very competent author.