Short Fiction About the Social Conflict - Essay Example

“Emma Zunz Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, “Emma Zunz,” is a tale of revenge and justice. The heroine, the eponymous Emma Zunz, avenges the death of her father by murdering the man who is responsible for his wrongful conviction and subsequent suicide. Emma’s boss, Aaron Loewenthal, frames her father for his own embezzlement of company funds. Her father flees to Brazil, and is driven to suicide. Emma avenges her father, and kills Loewenthal, in a well-planned operation, which ensures that she is not punished. “Emma Zunz,” is a complex tale, with several moral implications as to right and wrong. The heroine is unequivocally a murderess, who cold-bloodedly shoots and kills a man. Borges’ narrative explores the moral implication of this premeditated murder. The story center round the cause of Emma’s actions, and analyses her justification. For six years, Emma has lived with the desire for vengeance. She has “guarded the secret. She had revealed it to no one, not even to her best friend,” (Borges, paragraph 3). When her father commits suicide, Emma is finally ready to execute her revenge. This desire for revenge is the ruling passion of Emma’s nature. Borges effectively highlights Emma’s thirst for vengeance through the use of setting, symbolism, and tone. The setting of the story reflects Emma’s careful concealment of her smoldering desire for vengeance. The fact that she chooses to work at Aaron Loewenthal’s textile mills itself demonstrates her need to keep him within her ambit, so that he can be conveniently reached at the appropriate time. She never loses sight of her belief that Loewenthal is the one who framed her father: “but this she never forgot” (Borges, 3). She keeps her hatred alive for six long years. Emma lives in a solitary room in the upstairs of a dark boardinghouse, away from her friends at the factory. This setting is appropriate for her concealed passion, and contrasts with the ordinary life of visits to the club, movies, and walks, which she shares with her friends in the public light. This contrast highlights the fact that Emma is effectively living a double life: one as a normal factory girl, the other as a calculating woman, nursing thoughts of vengeance. As the setting of the story moves to the scene of Emma’s defilement, it changes to reflect the sordidness of the act. This part of the narrative is set in the waterfront, the bars, “the infamous Paseo de Julio,” “a murky entrance hall,” and “a narrow staircase” (Borges, 6). Again, the setting of the story changes to reflect the scene of the murder at the climax. Loewenthal’s house is “situated in the barren outskirts of the town” (Borges, 9). He is barricaded behind iron gates, guarded by a dog, and has a revolver at hand. However, Emma, with her clever strategy, easily breaches his defenses, and executes her revenge. “Emma Zunz,” is filled with symbolism, which Borges skillfully uses to weave his tale of revenge. The most powerful symbol is the name of the heroine: Emma is the abbreviation of her father’s name, Emmanuel. Borges makes it evident that Emma is the instrument of her father’s revenge. Emma fuses with Emmanuel: Emma becomes her father. Emma’s murder of Loewenthal is on behalf of Emmanuel. However, once she submits to the sailor, “more than the urgency of avenging her father, Emma felt the need of inflicting punishment for the outrage she had suffered” (Borges, 12). Now, Loewenthal’s murder is also executed on her own behalf. The two situations fuse into one. Emma is now wreaking vengeance for her own shame, rather than that of her father. Again, “the sacrifice” (Borges, 7) Emma makes is symbolic of Christ’s sacrifice: just as Christ sacrificed himself for humanity, Emma sacrifices her body for justice for her father. The name Emmanuel is symbolic of Christ. Emma wanders the waterfront, the seedy red-light district, and then follows the sailor to a door, a hallway, a vestibule, a stairway, a passageway, and finally the door which closes behind her. This convoluted path which Emma takes to the room for her encounter with the sailor is symbolic of the maze of pain, anger, hatred and falsehood which she navigates in order to achieve her goal of revenge. When she leaves the brothel, and perceives that the streets retain their normalcy, she is relieved that “what had happened had not contaminated things” (Borges, 8). Here, the streets are symbolic of Emma, who has not been contaminated by her submission to the violation of her body. She retains her purity in spite of this degradation. Again, the act of tearing up the money which the sailor leaves her is symbolic of her putting her defilement outside her life. This symbolism is strengthened by the fact that her time in the room is referred to as “that time outside of time” (Borges, 7). The different symbolism used in the story strengthens the theme of revenge. The tone adopted by Borges is unequivocally sympathetic towards his heroine. The reader’s sympathy is aroused by Emma’s reminiscences of “the old happy days” (Borges, 3) of her childhood. He emphasizes the extent of the sacrifice Emma makes in submitting to a man in order to avenge her father’s ruin and death. After all, she is willing to go to this extreme although “men inspired in her, still, an almost pathological fear” (Borges, 4). Borges refused to demean her action as an act of prostitution, and asserts that the sailor only “served her for justice” (Borges, 7). The author makes it clear to the reader that, in his opinion, Emma is justified in murdering Loewenthal. The tone he uses in his treatment of Loewenthal’s character is emphatically negative. He worships money, which is the ruling passion of his life. He is not an achiever. Loewenthal is described as a loner, humorless, a miser, living in fear, a hypocrite whose religious beliefs “exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety” (Borges, 9). The author demeans not only his moral integrity, but also his physical appearance, making him bald and fat. All in all, Borges paints a picture of Loewenthal which is less than human, describing the man as “the wretched creature” (11). When Emma shoots him, the author’s tone does not convey any horror or pity for the dying man. On the contrary, Loewenthal’s last moments before death are devoted to “evil words” emanating from “obscene lips” (Borges, 12). Borges attitude does not have the least tinge of criticism for Emma’s actions. Her premeditated, cold murder of Loewenthal is considered the means for “the Justice of God to triumph over human justice” (Borges, 11). In fact, the author conveys a sense of admiration for the meticulous planning and execution of the murder by Emma, ending on an almost triumphant note. Borges’ tone makes it eminently clear to the reader that his heroine does not deserve punishment for her crime. “Emma Zunz” is completely focused on the theme of revenge and justice. The plot revolves round the protagonist’s quest for revenge, and the way in which she plans the murder of Aaron Loewenthal. Her well-thought out strategy ensures the success of her plan and helps her to escape punishment. However, she pays for her success with the sacrifice of her body. Borges effectively uses setting, symbolism and tone to emphasize Emma’s burning desire for revenge. The setting changes to reflect the narratives’ progression from the secret nurturing of Emma’s plans for revenge, the defilement of her body, and the final murder. “Emma Zunz” is rich in the use of symbolism to convey the various angles of the plot. Emma’s identification with her father, her sacrifice, and her untainted spirit, are all expressed through the use of symbols. The author’s tone is obviously sympathetic towards his heroine. Borges adopts an attitude which encourages the reader to identify with Emma in her pain and anger, to admire her great sacrifice, and accept her actions as a blow for justice. The setting, the use of symbols, and the author’s tone, make “Emma Zunz” a very engaging short story. Works Cited. Borges, Jorge Luis. “Emma Zunz.” Deceptology. Web. 30 September 2012. http://www.deceptology.com/2010/01/emma-zunz-by-jorge-luis-borges.html  Returning home from the Tarbuch and Loewenthal textile mills on the 14th of January, 1922, Emma Zunz discovered in the rear of the entrance hall a letter, posted in Brazil, which informed her that her father had died. The stamp and the envelope deceived her at first; then the unfamiliar handwriting made her uneasy. Nine or ten lines tried to fill up the page; Emma read that Mr. Maier had taken by mistake a large dose of veronal and had died on the third of the month in the hospital of Bage. A boarding-house friend of her father had signed the letter, some Fein or Fain from Rio Grande, with no way of knowing that he was addressing the deceased's daughter.  Emma dropped the paper. Her first impression was of a weak feeling in her stomach and in her knees; then of blind guilt, of unreality, of coldness, of fear; then she wished that it were already the next day. Immediately afterward she realized that that wish was futile because the death of her father was the only thing that had happened in the world, and it would go on happening endlessly. She picked up the piece of paper and went to her room. Furtively, she hid it in a drawer, as if somehow she already knew the ulterior facts. She had already begun to suspect them, perhaps; she had already become the person she would be. In the growing darkness, Emma wept until the end of that day for the suicide of Manuel Maier, who in the old happy days was Emmanuel Zunz. She remembered summer vacations at a little farm near Gualeguay, she remembered (tried to remember) her mother, she remembered the little house at Lanus which had been auctioned off, she remembered the yellow lozenges of a window, she remembered the warrant for arrest, the ignominy, she remembered the poison-pen letters with the newspaper's account of "the cashier's embezzlement," she remembered (but this she never forgot) that her father, on the last night, had sworn to her that the thief was Loewenthal. Loewenthal, Aaron Loewenthal, formerly the manager of the factory and now one of the owners. Since 1916 Emma had guarded the secret. She had revealed it to no one, not even to her best friend, Elsa Urstein. Perhaps she was shunning profane incredulity; perhaps she believed that the secret was a link between herself and the absent parent. Loewenthal did not know that she knew; Emma Zunz derived from this slight fact a feeling of power.  She did not sleep that night and when the first light of dawn defined the rectangle of the window, her plan was already perfected. She tried to make the day, which seemed interminable to her, like any other. At the factory there were rumors of a strike. Emma declared herself, as usual, against all violence. At six o'clock, with work over, she went with Elsa to a women's club that had a gymnasium and a swimming pool. They signed their names; she had to repeat and spell out her first and her last name, she had to respond to the vulgar jokes that accompanied the medical examination. With Elsa and with the youngest of the Kronfuss girls she discussed what movie they would go to Sunday afternoon. Then they talked about boyfriends and no one expected Emma to speak. In April she would be nineteen years old, but men inspired in her, still, an almost pathological fear. . . Having returned home, she prepared a tapioca soup and a few vegetables, ate early, went to bed and forced herself to sleep. In this way, laborious and trivial, Friday the fifteenth, the day before, elapsed.  Impatience awoke her on Saturday. Impatience it was, not uneasiness, and the special relief of it being that day at last. No longer did she have to plan and imagine; within a few hours the simplicity of the facts would suffice. She read in La Prensa that the Nordstjarnan, out of Malmo, would sail that evening from Pier 3. She phoned Loewenthal, insinuated that she wanted to confide in him, without the other girls knowing, something pertaining to the strike; and she promised to stop by at his office at nightfall. Her voice trembled; the tremor was suitable to an informer. Nothing else of note happened that morning. Emma worked until twelve o'clock and then settled with Elsa and Perla Kronfuss the details of their Sunday stroll. She lay down after lunch and reviewed, with her eyes closed, the plan she had devised. She thought that the final step would be less horrible than the first and that it would doubtlessly afford her the taste of victory and justice. Suddenly, alarmed, she got up and ran to the dresser drawer. She opened it; beneath the picture of Milton Sills, where she had left it the night before, was Fain's letter. No one could have seen it; she began to read it and tore it up.  To relate with some reality the events of that afternoon would be difficult and perhaps unrighteous. One attribute of a hellish experience is unreality, an attribute that seems to allay its terrors and which aggravates them perhaps. How could one make credible an action which was scarcely believed in by the person who executed it, how to recover that brief chaos which today the memory of Emma Zunz repudiates and confuses? Emma lived in Almagro, on Liniers Street: we are certain that in the afternoon she went down to the waterfront. Perhaps on the infamous Paseo de Julio she saw herself multiplied in mirrors, revealed by lights and denuded by hungry eyes, but it is more reasonable to suppose that at first she wandered, unnoticed, through the indifferent portico. . . She entered two or three bars, noted the routine or technique of the other women. Finally she came across men from the Nordstjarnan. One of them, very young, she feared might inspire some tenderness in her and she chose instead another, perhaps shorter than she and coarse, in order that the purity of the horror might not be mitigated. The man led her to a door, then to a murky entrance hall and afterwards to a narrow stairway and then a vestibule (in which there was a window with lozenges identical to those in the house at Lanus) and then to a passageway and then to a door which was closed behind her. The arduous events are outside of time, either because the immediate past is as if disconnected from the future, or because the parts which form these events do not seem to be consecutive.  During that time outside of time, in that perplexing disorder of disconnected and atrocious sensations, did Emma Zunz think once about the dead man who motivated the sacrifice? It is my belief that she did think once, and in that moment she endangered her desperate undertaking. She thought (she was unable not to think) that her father had done to her mother the hideous thing that was being done to her now. She thought of it with weak amazement and took refuge, quickly, in vertigo. The man, a Swede or Finn, did not speak Spanish. He was a tool for Emma, as she was for him, but she served him for pleasure whereas he served her for justice.  When she was alone, Emma did not open her eyes immediately. On the little night table was the money that the man had left: Emma sat up and tore it to pieces as before she had torn the letter. Tearing money is an impiety, like throwing away bread; Emma repented the moment after she did it. An act of pride and on that day. . . Her fear was lost in the grief of her body, in her disgust. The grief and the nausea were chaining her, but Emma got up slowly and proceeded to dress herself. In the room there were no longer any bright colors; the last light of dusk was weakening. Emma was able to leave without anyone seeing her; at the corner she got on a Lacroze streetcar heading west. She selected, in keeping with her plan, the seat farthest toward the front, so that her face would not be seen. Perhaps it comforted her to verify in the insipid movement along the streets that what had happened had not contaminated things. She rode through the diminishing opaque suburbs, seeing them and forgetting them at the same instant, and got off on one of the side streets of Warnes. Paradoxically her fatigue was turning out to be a strength, since it obligated her to concentrate on the details of the adventure and concealed from her the background and the objective.  Aaron Loewenthal was to all persons a serious man, to his intimate friends a miser. He lived above the factory, alone. Situated in the barren outskirts of the town, he feared thieves; in the patio of the factory there was a large dog and in the drawer of his desk, everyone knew, a revolver. He had mourned with gravity, the year before, the unexpected death of his wife -- a Gauss who had brought him a fine dowry -- but money was his real passion. With intimate embarrassment, he knew himself to be less apt at earning it than at saving it. He was very religious; he believed he had a secret pact with God which exempted him from doing good in exchange for prayers and piety. Bald, fat, wearing the band of mourning, with smoked glasses and blond beard, he was standing next to the window awaiting the confidential report of worker Zunz.  He saw her push the iron gate (which he had left open for her) and cross the gloomy patio. He saw her make a little detour when the chained dog barked. Emma's lips were moving rapidly, like those of someone praying in a low voice; weary, they were repeating the sentence which Mr. Loewenthal would hear before dying.  Things did not happen as Emma Zunz had anticipated. Ever since the morning before she had imagined herself wielding the firm revolver, forcing the wretched creature to confess his wretched guilt and exposing the daring stratagem which would permit the Justice of God to triumph over human justice. (Not out of fear but because of being an instrument of Justice she did not want to be punished.) Then, one single shot in the center of his chest would seal Loewenthal's fate. But things did not happen that way.  In Aaron Loewenthal's presence, more than the urgency of avenging her father, Emma felt the need of inflicting punishment for the outrage she had suffered. She was unable not to kill him after that thorough dishonor. Nor did she have time for theatrics. Seated, timid, she made excuses to Loewenthal, she invoked (as a privilege of the informer) the obligation of loyalty, uttered a few names, inferred others and broke off as if fear had conquered her. She managed to have Loewenthal leave to get a glass of water for her. When the former, unconvinced by such a fuss but indulgent, returned from the dining room, Emma had already taken the heavy revolver out of the drawer. She squeezed the trigger twice. The large body collapsed as if the reports and the smoke had shattered it, the glass of water smashed, the face looked at her with amazement and anger, the mouth of the face swore at her in Spanish and Yiddish. The evil words did not slacken; Emma had to fire again. In the patio the chained dog broke out barking, and a gush of rude blood flowed from the obscene lips and soiled the beard and the clothing. Emma began the accusation she had prepared ("I have avenged my father and they will not be able to punish me. . ."), but she did not finish it, because Mr. Loewenthal had already died. She never knew if he managed to understand.  The straining barks reminded her that she could not, yet, rest. She disarranged the divan, unbuttoned the dead man's jacket, took off the bespattered glasses and left them on the filing cabinet. Then she picked up the telephone and repeated what she would repeat so many times again, with these and with other words: Something incredible has happened. . . Mr. Loewenthal had me come over on the pretext of the strike. . . He abused me, 1 killed him . . .  Actually, the story was incredible, but it impressed everyone because substantially it was true. True was Emma Zunz' tone, true was her shame, true was her hate. True also was the outrage she had suffered: only the circumstances were false, the time, and one or two proper names.  Read More