Borges’ use of prolepsis at the start of the story does one of two things. Firstly, it introduces us to Lonrott as a decently capable detective as he is able to figure out when one of the murders is, however, he isn’t able to stop it. Secondly, it provides a brief overview of the conclusion of the text, but with very few details, so it keeps the readers from knowing the whole truth. The use of prolepsis causes the reader to expect Lonrott to solve the crime, increasing his credibility, as well as create anticipation and suspense about the end of the story.
After recognizing these two facts, it led to me reading the text with a lot of trust in Lonrott, so I didn’t pay much attention to his intense research into Jewish practices and holidays. It also made me read the text carefully to try and figure out the conclusion before it was fully revealed to the reader. It became a competition between the text and myself, as I knew what was going to happen, but I wanted to figure out how before it was unveiled by Borges. Each detail and fact that was thrown at me was analyzed and taken note of to try and piece together a truth that would eventually solve the case. Unfortunately (but fortunately because it made it more interesting), Borges offered us a solution that was much more complex than we might have expected. Well, not exactly much more complex because the start of all the murders ended up being just as Treviranus had predicted. As the readers, we are thrown off not only by Lonrott being the last murdered person but also by the fact that he was wrong all along despite the long explanations and discoveries we are told about.
Hey Ashley, I definitely also read the story with a blind faith in Lonnrot as a capable detective! I suppose when we read detective fiction we have the assumption that the detective will always outsmart the criminal, so the ending was a clever way of waking us up from the usual detective fiction tropes. The hidden clues, for example in the names and numbers, are perhaps Borges’ subtle clues for us as the readers to make the connections that Lonnrot fails to do as he investigates the several misdirections. I wonder if there was no prolepsis at the beginning if we would have read the story in the same way, maybe we would have been more skeptical of the clues? Borges’ played around with his words enough in the prolepsis that I never questioned that Lonnrot would end up being murdered, making the ending so much more shocking and powerful. This story has made me a more suspicious reader for sure!
Hi Ashley, I felt the same way while reading Borges’s text. It was clever for Borges to deviate away from predictable detective fiction tropes because I think he wanted to prioritize creating the effect of the “suspicious reader.” It’s not like we as readers would ever expect the protagonist to end up dying and be outsmarted by the antagonist due to our prior knowledge that detectives are supposed to be intelligent enough to solve the mystery and unveil the culprit before it’s too late. We talked about how detectives are often very rational in their methodology and analysis. The economic definition for rationality, however, is simply “consistency.” The reason why Lonnrot failed was because he unveiled too much to his opponent that when a coincidental death occurs, Red Scharlach is able to predict his future actions due to his “rational” patterns of thinking. Rationality is being used against the detective in this case which deviates from the trope.