Circular Ruins

In the tale "The Circular Ruins," by Jorge Luis Borges, there is a fine line created between perception and reality. Throughout this tale the wizard is convinced that his purpose is to create a son, a son to be created only through his dreams.

The wizard thought long and hard about his decision and realized how terrible it would be for his son to find out that he wasn't really real, but only a perception of someone else's thoughts. Then, he thought about what the God of fire had stated and that they would be the only two to know the truth of his being. The wizard finally convinced himself to go ahead with his plans and went to go and see the God of fire. By walking through the fire he knew that was about to sacrifice his own life. But, at this point he became conscious of his own reality. His skin had not burned. He was devastated, shocked, and embarrassed to realize that he too was only the creation of another's dream. He had come to terms with his biggest fear.

The entire time the wizard believed that he could create a man better than himself, but this was an impossibility. The reality was that he could not create anything greater than himself for he was limited by his dreamer. The wizard could only give to his dream what his dreamer had given to him. The problems that he faced were not only his problems, but the problems in which his dreamer and all other dreamers before him had encountered.

As the title implies the circular ruins are a constant never ending cycle. No matter what happens everything will always end in the same way. The ruins are going to be destroyed and the phantom from another's dream has to fulfill his duty by dreaming of another man to brought into this so called reality.