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I'm reading "The House of Asterion" by Jorge Luis Borges and I have a question about the effect and significance of the point of view in the story.

It's safe to say that Borges was obsessed with literal and metaphorical labyrinths. The story begins in the first person point of view. The narrator calls himself Asterion and with the introductory line, it seems to indicate that he is a prince who is not allowed to leave his castle. The narrator goes on to defend himself. He claims that he is not a prisoner even though he never leaves his house. He says that claims about his madness and misanthropy (hating mankind) are just the result of the public's contempt for him.


The footnote adds that fourteen actually means infinite and therefore, there are an infinite number of doors. This is according to Asterion. He, Asterion, also says, "The house is the same size as the world; or rather it is the world." Having never left his house, it would be "the world" to him. We get this unique perspective from the narrator, a being who lives a hermetic life in a seemingly endless labyrinth of a home. Is his perspective based upon psychosis as an effect of being a prisoner or is he actually living in a gigantic labyrinth from which he can not escape? 


This story is reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe's writing. We don't know if the narrator is misunderstood. It isn't until the final line that we get a clue about who the narrator is or why he lives this way. In the last few lines, the narration shifts from the first person perspective of Asterion to the first person perspective of Theseus. From this line, we learn that Theseus has just destroyed the Minotaur. And from this, we can conclude that the first bulk of the story is narrated by the Minotaur. Theseus is the "redeemer" the Minotaur spoke about. Killing the Minotaur was redeeming him or freeing him from his labyrinthine prison. 


Borges chooses to consider the Minotaur's perspective so the reader can get the sense of his experience. Borges is playing with ideas like the labyrinth, infinity, and perspective. The Minotaur says his house is the world because that is all he's ever known. This is, perhaps, an allusion to Plato's Allegory of the Cave. In this allegory, people are in a cave and they are chained in such a way that they have no knowledge of the outside world. Borges was always interested in how people see the world differently. He was also interested in how perspective is limited or filtered. He uses the Minotaur's perspective to explore these ideas. 

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