SOURCE: “Narrative Authority in Fiction and Film: The Case of Borges's ‘El Muerto,’” in Romance Notes, Vol. XXXI, No. 2, Winter, 1990, pp. 133-39.

In the following essay, Arrington describes the translation of Borges's “El Muerto” from short story to film.

Originally published in Sur in November 1946 and later included in one of Borges's most important collections, El Aleph (1949), “El muerto”¹ tells the story of Benjamín Otálora, an impetuous young compadrito from Buenos Aires, who flees Argentina after killing a man in a knife fight. The protagonist crosses the Río de la Plata carrying with him a letter of introduction from his ward boss addressed to a Uruguayan strongman named Azevedo Bandeira. After learning that the man whose life he has just saved during a barroom brawl is none other than Azevedo Bandeira, Otálora tears up the letter, hoping to win Bandeira's sympathies on his own...