An Analysis of the Circular Ruins"The Circular Ruins" is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1964. Borges was born in 1899 and died in 1986. At the age of six, he knew he wanted to be a writer. At the age of eight he had already written his first story. Most of Borges' stories are listed in the fantasy literature category. Fantasy literature has many things in common with magical realism, but is less believable. Magical realism and fantasy literature both contain magical and realistic elements. The realistic elements of this story provide a description of the surrounding environment. They tell of a river and a mountain. A "circular enclosure crowned by a stone tiger or horse, which was once the color of fire and now that of ash" is the temple that the main character visits (25). There are birds in the jungle that sometimes wake the main character with their cries and indigenous people living nearby who bring him food. The fire and the two boatmen who appear later in the story are also realistic elements. Magical, or fantastic, elements cause the story to take a completely different path than it would have without them. Rabkin says that "the truly fantastic occurs when the fundamental rules of a narrative are forced to make a 180-degree turn" (18-19). The main character "climbed up the bank without moving aside (probably without feeling) the brambles that were tearing his flesh...until the circular fence" and "laid down under the pedestal" (25). This description seems normal, but when he wakes up he finds that his "wounds have healed" (25). The main character is at the temple to dream of life, a man. He also dreams of a fire god made up of a combination of different animals and... middle of paper... tic literature. The magical, or fantastical, elements in "The Circular Ruins" seem to go with the realistic elements. There is no hesitation in the main character to make the magical elements seem normal. Therefore, this story seems to fall into the category of magical realism. Works Cited Borges, Jorge Luis. "The circular ruins". A hammock under the mangoes. Ed. Tommaso Colchie. NY: Plume Printing, 1991. 25-29.Faris, Wendy B. “Scheherazade's Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction.” Magical Realism Theory, History, Community. Ed. Lois Parkinson Zamora and Wendy B. Faris. Durham: Duke UP, 1995. 163-190.Rabkin, Eric S. The Fantastic in Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1976.Schaffer, Barbara Joan. "The circular ruins". January 31st 2001.>