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.
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