Borges/The Narrator
Many of the stories throughout Ficciones feature Borges himself as the narrator. These stories include “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” “The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim,” “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,” “An Examination of the Work of…
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Bioy Casares
A friend of the narrator who appears in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.” Bioy, though the narrator does not reveal much about him, sparks the action of the story by remembering a quote from Uqbar and…
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Pierre Menard
Pierre Menard is a fictional friend of Borges. He is the subject of the story “Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote,” which follows his unconventional goal of writing Don Quixote as himself. In examining…
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The Wizard
The Wizard is the main character of “The Circular Ruins.” He seeks to imagine a man into existence. Because of this goal, and because he communicates with the Fire god, the wizard is deeply connected…
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The Law Student
The law student is the main character of the fictional novel The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim, which Borges writes about in his story of the same name. The student, who is Muslim, accidentally kills a…
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Herbert Quain
Herbert Quain is a fictional literary friend of Borges. Upon his death, Borges decides to write about his work. Borges delves into four works of Quain’s, all of which put some twist on their…
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Dr. Yu Tsun
Dr. Yu Tsun is a spy for the Germans during World War I in “The Garden of Forking Paths.” He is Chinese and seeks to prove to his Chief that a Chinese man can be…
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Stephen Albert
Stephen Albert is a Sinologist in “The Garden of Forking Paths.” He studies the work of Dr. Yu Tsun’s ancestor, Ts’ui Pên. When Yu Tsun arrives at Albert’s house, Albert tells Yu Tsun about his…
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Ts’ui Pên
Ts’ui Pên is Yu Tsun’s great-grandfather in “The Garden of Forking Paths.” He is famous for having set out to write a novel and create a labyrinth, and though he did write a novel…
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Ireneo Funes
Borges meets Ireneo Funes on a trip to Uruguay. One day, Funes has a horse-riding accident and is left paralyzed. He hears that Borges has brought Latin books to Uruguay and asks to borrow them…
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The Englishman of Colorada/The Irishman/John Vincent Moon
In “The Form of the Sword,” Borges spends a night talking to the Englishman of Colorada. He learns that the Englishman is actually Irish, and he tells Borges the story of how he got his…
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Fergus Kilpatrick
In “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” Kilpatrick is a revolutionary for Irish independence in the 1820s. In the present, his great-grandson Ryan is writing a biography of Fergus. However, in his writing, Ryan …
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Ryan
In “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero,” Ryan is the great-grandson of Fergus Kilpatrick, an Irish revolutionary. When Ryan discovers that Kilpatrick staged his own death in order to act as a martyr…
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Erik Lönnrot
In “Death and the Compass,” Lönnrot is a detective. Lönnrot becomes obsessed with solving a series of murders, following mysterious clues that reference Judaism and Talmudic studies. However, in the end, the clues are a…
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Dr. Marcel Yarmolinsky
Dr. Marcel Yarmolinsky is a Talmudic scholar who is the first victim in the string of murders that takes pace in “Death and the Compass.” When Lönnrot investigates the murder, he finds a piece of…
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Jaromir Hladík
In “The Secret Miracle,” Hladík is a Jewish writer who is captured by the Nazis during the Nazi occupation of Prague. He sits in prison and dreads his execution, asking God for more time to…
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Nils Runeberg
In “Three Versions of Judas,” Nils Runeberg is a Swedish theologian who posits that Judas made a holy sacrifice by betraying Jesus, damning himself to hell so that Jesus could do his good works. Runeburg’s…
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Juan Dahlmann
Juan Dahlmann is the main character of “The South.” After a head injury, Dahlmann is hospitalized. Upon his release, he travels to his villa in the South. On the way, he falls into a duel…
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Minor Characters
The Wizard’s Son
The man that the wizard dreams up. When the wizard releases him from his mind the wizard erases his son’s memory so that he will not know that he is a creation of the wizard’s imagination.
Al-Mu’tasim
Al-Mu’tasim is a sage from the fictional novel The Approach to Al-Mu’tasim. In the novel, a law student goes on a journey to find Al-Mu’tasim. The story ends right as the student enters his sanctuary, and Al-Mu’tasim remains a mysterious symbol of the divine within human beings.
The Babylonian
The Babylonian is the narrator of the story “The Babylon Lottery.” The narrator is a nondescript Babylonian citizen who describes the tradition of the Babylon lottery. He himself, “like all men in Babylon,” has been both a proconsul and a slave as a result of the lottery.
The Company
In the story “The Babylon Lottery,” the Company acts as the all-powerful body that controls the lottery and, thus, everything that happens in Babylon.
The Librarian
The librarian is the narrator of the story “The Library of Babel.” He describes his infinite library, which is his entire universe.
Richard Madden
Richard Madden is a British operative in “The Garden of Forking Paths.” He pursues Dr. Yu Tsun and eventually arrests him.
James Alexander Nolan
James Alexander Nolan is Fergus Kilpatrick’s comrade in “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero.” Nolan is the one who discovered that Fergus Kilpatrick was actually a traitor, but he decided to hide this information for the sake of the cause.
Commissioner Treviranus
Commissioner Treviranus is the commissioner who initially works with Erik Lönnrot on the murder case in “Death and the Compass.”
Daniel Simon Azevedo
Daniel Simon Azevedo is a thief and informant who is the second corpse found in “Death and the Compass.”
Red Scharlach
In “Death and the Compass,” Red Scharlach is a criminal mastermind. By leaving clues, he sets a trap for the detective Lönnrot. He kills Lönnrot out of revenge, as Lönnrot arrested Scharlach’s brother.
Recabarren
In “The End,” Recabarren, who is paralyzed, lies in his room and overhears a duel between a guitarist and Martín Fierro.
The Guitarist
In “The End,” the guitarist duels Martín Fierro, who killed his brother. He kills Fierro and realizes that he has changed, as he is now a killer.
Martín Fierro
Fierro is the main character of the famous (real-life) Argentinian epic poem The Gaucho Martín Fierro. He appears in “The End” as a character who duels the guitarist, whose brother he killed. He loses the duel and dies.
