Two labyrinths - where would you rather be?
Two Kings and two Labyrinths is a very short story, written by J.L. Borges. It barely manages to fill the space of a single page; and yet there is enough in it to allow for an interesting dissertation. The actual story is about a rivalry between two kings: The King of Babylon had once invited the King of Arabia to his capital, and there got him to enter a labyrinth made of intricate passages, surrounded by tall walls. The King of Arabia only managed to find his way out after imploring his God for help. The experience terrified him, and he swore that in the future he would repay the Babylonian in kind, by introducing him to another labyrinth; one particular to his native and desolate Arabian realm... After his victory in war, the King of Arabia takes the King of Babylon hostage. He brings him to the desert, where, at the end of a three-day journey, he is abandoned. The desert is another kind of labyrinth. It has neither passages nor walls, but still finding one's way out of it is virtually impossible. A Labyrinth is More Than Just a Prison Cell A labyrinth isn’t just a structure which confines; it is one which serves the purpose of getting one disoriented. While a prison cell – regardless if it is nameless and obscure or one as famous as the stone vault in Sophocles’ play, Antigone, which was used to imprison the heroine and slowly drain her of the will to live – is just a simple room, enough to enclose, limit, and cause desperation, an actual labyrinth functions by allowing the person inside to still hope there is a chance of finding a way out... The labyrinth is different from a group of interconnecting cells, in that somewhere in it one may still discover a passage which will lead to liberation... The possibility of finding the exit may be so small that, in practice, one wouldn't ever succeed in this quest... It's not important, though, because the very form of the labyrinth forces its prisoner to accept that there are always new