The protagonist drinks from a normal river to become mortal again.
"The Immortal" serves as a perfect microcosm of Jorge Luis Borges’s entire literary philosophy. It challenges our perception of reality, questions the permanence of the human soul, and redefines the relationship between author, text, and reader. Downloading a comprehensive study guide or an authorized translation opens the door to a world where literature itself becomes an immortal, interconnected labyrinth.
While The Immortal deals with physical/biological eternity, The Library of Babel deals with textual immortality.
The immortal Homer explains the crushing horror of their existence: since they will see everything eventually, nothing is surprising. Immortality has erased memory and purpose. To be human is to die. Borges then delivers the story’s final, cruel twist: years later, Rufus finds the river of death and drinks from it, finally freeing himself from his eternal curse. However, the narrative frame collapses. The princess realizes that "Joseph Cartaphilus," the dead bookseller who sold her the manuscript, bore the name of the mythical Wandering Jew, doomed to wander the earth until the Second Coming. In a dizzying loop, we discover that the manuscript is not a legend from the past—Rufus, Cartaphilus, and Homer are the same man, still wandering, still immortal.
