Have you ever read a story with so much action that it keeps you on the edge of a cliff, but then crushes your thought about the character’s ethics? The short story “The Form of the Sword” was written by Jorge Luis Borges and published in 1942. This short story depicts the adventures of a man that was present in the Irish revolution, only to sell out one of his fellow countrymen to the enemy. His actions still plague his soul years later, at his home in Brazil. He sold the noble comrade out because of his cowardice, and the noble comrade was killed by a firing squad. While some people may find the story confusing, it should be used next year in this curriculum because of the great usage of allusion and foreshadowing.
Allusion and foreshadowing …show more content…
Hard vocabulary makes the story harder to understand, which results in a tedious read. After the narrator gives us information that they were Republicans and Catholics, he says, “For us, Ireland was not only the utopian future and the intolerable present; it was a bitter and loving mythology, it was the circular towers and red bogs” (214). “[U]topian” is a word that average 7th graders won’t know. Most people can guess that it means perfect or good, but not in a social or political way. This can affect the understanding because they don’t know how it’s describing the future. Also, usually no one has a clue about what a “bog” is, so they won’t know what the landscape looked like. The vocabulary is hard, but the allusion and foreshadowing make up for it. Someone who reads this short story will take away great examples of literary merit. Readers will get inspired by the examples too, and try to write their own. “The Form of the Sword” is a great book because of its details and literary merit. They fit well in the short story and are not just added randomly. The strengths outweigh the weaknesses, but it doesn’t mean there are no weaknesses at