Review: "The circular ruins"

By Catriel Benavídez

‘The circular ruins’ is one of the most well known short stories of the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. J. L. Borges is recognised because of his short stories all over the world.
‘The circular ruins’ is about a man who arrives in a land which was totally unknown only with the purpose of dreaming a man and imposing him on reality.
The story is very catching and has a wide vocabulary. Maybe you have to pay much attention because of that, but finally you enjoy it.
I would recommend to buy and read ‘The circular ruins’, especially if you like reading fantastic stories. I am sure it will catch your attention and you will like the end of this great short story.

Circular Ruins, by Agustina Claps

This short story was written by Jorge Luis Borges; it's about a wizard who wanted to dream the perfect person. After a few nights of strange dreams, he dreamed a classroom, he was the teacher, he was teaching; he started to look for the perfect person, but he did not find him; the next night he found a pupil in the same classroom that could be him, but then he knew that he wasn't. He kept looking, but he failed. He was tired; He started to have insomnia, so he decided to go to the forest to get tired. He talked to the "fire god", looking for help, the god asked him t adore him, and he would help him; the wizard did it. The end is "circular", an open ending.

In my opinion this is a very nice and educative story, it describes every scene very well, with interesting details, very complex vocabulary, it leave you a teaching.

On the other hand it's a very complicated story, the vocabulary is for people that have a very good language. You have to look for information to understand the story, becouse it uses synonyms that we are not use to reading

I recommend this story to language teachers, or professional people, and to look for information before and after the reading, to take advantage of this beautiful and strange story.

By Agustina Claps 3°E

A noise in the middle of the night

One day I was watching TV when I heard a noise. I was alone because my parents had gone to Mar del Plata. I didn`t go because I had to study.

I was very frightened, for this reason I closed all the doors. Then I heard another noise, I looked through the window and I saw a shadow. Some minutes later, somebody knocked at the door, I asked: “Who are you?” and nobody answered. Then he began to hit the door and cried some words but I didn`t understand.

At this moment I called the police. Ten minutes later the police arrived and arrested him. They said that he was a drunk man who wanted to rob.

When the police left my house I closed all the doors and windows and I went to bed. I hope I will never see this man again .

by Juan Andrés (2nd year)

Alan’s story

The following story is real.
It happened when we were 13 years old, and a friend invited us to sleep to her house. We didn´t know what was going to happen that night but this was a night we would never forget because it was the beginning of everything.
Let 's go back to the past, to this summer night.
We were chatting,having fun when our friend told us a story.We listened to it but we didn’t believe it at all. She told us that a few weeks ago , her sisters and herself were playing the game of the cup and a ghost contacted them. He told them that his name was Alan and that he was 6 years old when his mother killed him.
He wanted his story to be known by everyone and he looked for revenge.
After telling this story our friend said to us that she didn’t feel well in her house because strange things started to happen.
This night we took a lot of photos in the garden . A few months later watching those photos we noticed that in one of them a little boy appeared like a ghost in white.We remembered that this night was very late and we were alone. And then we started to believe in our friend’s story.
Until the night our friend played the game of the cup ,strange things happened in her house.Every time we go to her house we feel that something is with us, when we are on the 2° floor we listen to noises in the 1° floor, like a person moving furniture, and the light of her bedroom turns on and off or the door opens alone. When we talked to her by the phone we hear voices and screams.
Apart from those facts, she started to dream things that she doesn’t understand ,like her house but it was different,it was in the middle of the field and there were no houses around.She dreamed that she was on her sister’s bedroom and saw a little boy hiding something in the floor,on the corner.
One day she seemed to see a boy entering her sister’s bedroom. So she went to see,thinking that the boy was his nephew.When she entered the room...it was empty,but she was very brave,and remembering her dream she went to the corner,and noticed that the wood of the floor could be removed. So she did it.
And then,under all the dust,she found a picture,in which was her house like in the dream with a little boy and a woman in front of it.To our friend the woman looked familiar, so she showed the picture to her mother to know if she could recognise her.
Her mother recognised the woman at first sight:She was her great-aunt.Her mother told our friend that the woman was the previous owner of the house,and that she had a son called Alan that dissappeared at the edge of 6 in a misterious way. She also said that the woman went crazy,and saw her son’s ghost, so one day almost burnt the house and she was taken to a mental hospital.
Our friend told her mother what had happened and went to see this woman.When they talked to the woman, she confessed everything. She told them that she had killed the boy because she was jealous as his father always paid attention to his son and not to her.
She confessed everything because the boy appeared every night in her dreams,and she was tired of that.She also confessed that the boy was buried in the basement.
So,our friend and her mother reported this to the police and it went to the house and dug up the boy’s body. The case became well known . After that Alan could rest in peace and the house was free..nothing stange happened again.


by Nicole and Julieta (2nd year)

A strange country house.

Once upon a time, there was a couple in their way to their holidays. The man, who was called Peter was driving in her own car with Lucy, his girlfriend.
When they were going, there was a thick fog in the street so Peter changed the road. They were lost, and there was only an isolated house on their way.
Lucy thought that they shouldn’t stop there, but Peter said that it was a nice house where they could spend one night. So they picked up their luggage and entered the house. Suddenly Lucy found an old newspaper with a photo of a young couple which had died in a road accident on their way to the country house. This news called Lucy’s attention.
At night Peter and Lucy went out to find a restaurant because in the house there was nothing to eat. Two hours later they couldn’t find a restaurant and they decided to come back to the house. When they arrived the lights of the house were off, that called Lucy’s attention because she had turned the lights on when they had left the house. So she decided to get into the house and turned on the lights, but when she did so the radio was on, and that was very strange for Lucy because she didn’t see a radio in the house. So Lucy turned on the lights and the radio went off. After that she was afraid and she decided to call her boyfriend, but when she went out Peter was lying on the floor so she ran to the house and went upstairs to call the police.
When she spoke to the police station and gave the address of the house to the policeman, he said that this house had burned down twenty years ago. She was so desperate, so she went downstairs and a spirit appeared and she died of a heart attack.

By Clara Lobercho y Micaela Ciraolo. (2nd year)