Labyrinths Death and the Compass
Upon my first reading of Jorge Luis Borges "Death and the Compass" I found myself reacting to the chain of events not unlike the bland but efficient Inspector Treviranus. The Hotel du Nord with its hateful whiteness, numbered divisibility, and general appearance of a bordello seemed a natural place for a crime of greed and betrayal to have gone sour on a luckless criminal. The lure of priceless sapphires and mistaken destination was more than enough to recreate the crime that had taken place. Inspector Lonnot, who believed himself a man of pure reason, chose to ignore all the reasonable signs and formulate his hypotheses based on a desire to uncover some devious unholy plot of murder and deception. Both of us had no idea of the chain of events that was about to follow. Before discovering of the unfinished sentence, Lonnot believed that Doctor Yarmolinsky and his books were somehow part of the plot and also the of solution to this grisly murder. "The first letter of the Name has been uttered" was the doorway that led Inspector Lonnot into the Labyrinth from which he never emerges. The skill and subtlety in which the entrance is disguised is a combination of chance and cunning. The discovery of the sentence in the typewriter g
Lonnot dedicated himself to studying the books and "reasoned" that the Hasidim belief in the Absolute Name of God was at the root of the crime. At this point in the story one gets the feeling the Lonnot almost becomes seduced with the thought of having the immediate knowledge of all things that will be. Avoiding his "unreasonable" thoughts by studying the names of God with the belief that this would lead him to the name of the murder. This is further evidenced by the encounter with the editor of the Yidische Zaitung in which the latter wanted to talk about the murder, and Lonnot was set on discussing the diverse names of God. It seems out of character that if the journalist had written a completely false column that the esteemed inspector would not have become indignant. Lonnot studied the letter and map and found that the three locations were indeed the same distance apart as well as equal time in between the murders. He believes he is about to solve the mystery, grabs a set of calipers and a compass and plots the point of the final murder. Two equilateral triangles placed side by side form a diamond with all of its sides of equal distance. It all made sense to Lonnot: four letters in the name, four points on the compass, four sides on the diamond, and four murders, all equidistant apart. The fourth and final murder site, the abandoned villa of Triste-le-Roy. Lonnot promptly phoned Treviranus and informed him that there was a planned fourth murder and he could rest assured that the criminals would be in jail by Friday. Lonnot headed out on a train within an hour to the abandoned villa of Triste-le-Roy. Going over the details of the crimes in his head, he feels embarrassed that it took him one hundred days to figure it all out. The fact that Azevedo had been an associate of Red Scharlach; Lonnot for a moment considered that the fourth victim could
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Approximate Word count = 1255
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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