La lotería en Babilonia (or The Lottery in Babylon and The Babylon Lottery) is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. Released in 1941, it is the fifth short story in Borges' collection The Garden of Forked Paths and tells of the titular lottery.
Characters[]
- The narrator
Plot[]
Our narrator is a man living in Babylon waiting for a ship to set sail. According to him, he has gained the power of invisibility along with several other mystical abilities due to our titular secret lottery.
According to the narrator's father, the lottery was originally "a game of plebian character" held in the middle of the day. At first, these lotteries failed until adverse outcomes were added. This started as a small fine (which brought more public interest to the lotteries) and makes all members of Babylonian society (at least in the lower classes) became essentially manditory. The Company (the mysterious group who runs the lottery) begins jailing those who lose the lottery and refuse to pay the fine. After this, most of the condemned choose jailtime instead of paying the fine seeking to defraud the Company. Soon, riots began to break out over the lottery (motivated by feelings of revenge against the upper classes) but the lottery became an essential part of Babylonian society.
Soon, Babylon's society and the lottery became finely woven with the lottery as it became more fantastical and chaotic. Losing the lottery could result in execution (with the executioner being chosen by lottery) and winning could result in various mysterious results. By this time, the Company became nigh-omnipresent and omnipotent within Babylon, though they remained extremely secretive. Though the Company and their lottery became essential parts of Babylon's society, very few people attempted to "set up a general theory of the games". One of these theories postulates that a party could manipulate the lottery to cause someone's death and caused reforms within the lottery - making it into a symbolic affair in which "no decision is final [and] all diverge into others". Even after this, the Company remains absolutely secretive (with the narrator saying that it "eludes all publicity" with "divine modesty") to such an extent that some heresiarchs say that the Company "has never existed and never will", a conjecture which our narrator states is "vile".
See also[]
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
Sources[]
- Wikipedia