Death and the Compass

Style and Technique

Borges’s style in «Death and the Compass» is marked by exquisite precision and refined conciseness, where every word is honed and the sentences resonate like formulas of a mysterious world. His prose is rich with allusions, philosophical undertones, and subtle irony, giving the narrative special depth and complexity. The author masterfully uses intertextuality, weaving references to Kabbalah, detective fiction, and mythology into the fabric of the story, creating an atmosphere of intellectual labyrinth. Borges’s literary devices—mirrors, doubles, symmetries, the play with motifs of infinity and chance—turn the narrative into a riddle, with the story’s structure built as a complex puzzle: every detail gains meaning only at the end, and the plot lines intertwine in an elegant pattern, governed by strict logic yet open to countless interpretations. The restrained, almost mathematical composition is combined with poetic imagery, and the narrative, free of unnecessary embellishments, acquires a special expressiveness and power, compelling the reader to return to the text again and again in search of new meanings.