The Book of Sand

An epigraph is a quotation provided prior to the story’s opening that sets the stage for it. The Epigraph “...thy rope of sands...” recalls the “sand” of the title and relates specifically to the spiritual and psychological bindings that restrict and inform everyone. It is taken from the early 17th-century poem “The Collar” by George Herbert, which discusses the collar of priesthood. The speaker in Herbert’s work faces conflicting feelings of restriction and meaning while questioning his own life under Christianity. The “ropes” in Borges’s Epigraph are simultaneously the bindings that the priesthood imposes on Herbert’s narrator and the guiding forces in the life of a Christian.

However, Herbert’s poem is ambiguous. The narrator laments his own life throughout the poem yet ends with his acceptance of God’s guidance. The poem leaves ambiguous whether this acceptance is true and valid, making it a comfort that subverts the “ropes of sand,” or an act of resignation that indicates giving up the struggle for truth or freedom. By opening the story with this specific line from an ambiguous poem, Borges engages with the binary of freedom and security, noting that the ropes that bind Herbert, like the book that binds the narrator, can be both restricting or enlightening, depending on the individual’s perception.