Synopsis: The House of Asterion is a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, published in 1947 in Los Anales de Buenos Aires and later included in El Aleph (1949). It narrates the life of Asterion, a solitary being who inhabits an immense and labyrinthine house. From his perspective, he defends his isolation and describes his games, thoughts, and the strange architecture of his home, where each corridor seems to repeat itself endlessly. Despite his apparent freedom, Asterion longs for the arrival of a redeemer to end his solitude without fully understanding the meaning of his destiny.
Warning
The following summary and analysis is only a semblance and one of the many possible readings of the text. It is not intended to replace the experience of reading the story.
Summary of The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges
Asterion, the protagonist of the story, narrates his life inside an immense and labyrinthine house in the first person, which, according to him, is unique. He defends himself against accusations of arrogance, madness, and misanthropy by ensuring that his house is always open to anyone wishing to enter. However, despite this statement, he lives completely alone. He explains that, although he could go out, he avoided it because the outside world and its inhabitants inspired fear and revulsion in him. On one of his rare forays outside his home, people reacted with panic to his presence, taking refuge or trying to attack him, which reinforces his conviction that he does not belong in that world.
To combat boredom, Asterion tirelessly roams his house, running down corridors until he is dizzy, dropping from the rooftops, and playing hide and seek in the shadows of the corridors. His loneliness leads him to invent a game in which he imagines another Asterion with whom he dialogues and to whom he shows the different parts of the house. However, sometimes, he gets confused with the layout of the spaces, which makes them laugh. He also reflects on the nature of his home and concludes that the house is the world itself since everything seems to be repeated infinitely inside it. There are numerous identical courtyards, cisterns, and managers. However, he recognizes that two things seem to exist only once: the sun and himself. In a moment of digression, he wonders if he created the house, the stars, and the sun, although he does not remember doing so.
Asterion mentions that every nine years, he is visited by nine men, whom he “frees from all evil.” Without apparent violence, he annihilates them without shedding blood and leaves their bodies where they have fallen. He does not know who they are or where they come from, but he remembers that one prophesied the arrival of a redeemer, someone who would come to free him from his solitary existence. Since then, he has lived in the hope of his arrival and wonders what his redeemer will be like: will he be a bull, a man, or something similar to him?
The story culminates with an abrupt change of perspective. Asterion’s first-person narration is replaced by a dialogue between Theseus and Ariadne, in which the hero remarks, surprised, that the Minotaur barely fought back when he was killed. Thus, the story reveals that Asterion is, in fact, the Minotaur of Greek mythology, locked in the labyrinth and awaiting his fate.
Characters from The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges
Asterion is the protagonist and narrator of the story. His voice guides us through his inner world and introduces us to his existence in the immense labyrinthine house where he lives in complete solitude. From the beginning, we perceive a mixture of arrogance and vulnerability in him. He defends himself against those who accuse him of pride and misanthropy by claiming that his house is open to everyone, although, in practice, no one enters or stays with him. His perception of the world is marked by his own logic, in which the repetition and immensity of his home reflect his isolation and his inability to understand the reality outside. He amuses himself with children’s and solitary games, imagining the presence of another Asterion to alleviate his loneliness. Despite his apparent self-sufficiency, deep down, he longs for genuine companionship and awaits the arrival of his redeemer, who, according to prophecy, will come to set him free. However, his understanding of this liberation is ambiguous, as he does not seem to foresee his death. His innocent character and his way of narrating his world with an almost childlike tone contrast with his brutal task of killing the men who enter the house every nine years, a task he carries out with a disturbing serenity as if it were just another rite within his cyclical and monotonous existence. The story’s final revelation shows us that Asterion is the Minotaur, and his perspective allows us to see him not as a monster but as a being condemned to loneliness and to a destiny that he does not fully understand.
Theseus only appears at the end of the story, but his presence is fundamental. He is the hero who ends Asterion’s life, fulfilling the prophecy of the “redeemer” that the Minotaur awaited without understanding its true meaning. His only line of dialogue — “The Minotaur barely defended himself” — suggests his surprise at the passivity of his enemy, reinforcing the idea that Asterion was never really a bloodthirsty monster but a solitary creature resigned to his fate. Theseus represents the external gaze that defines Asterion as the Minotaur of Greek mythology, providing the reader with the key to reinterpreting the whole story.
Ariadne is mentioned briefly at the end of the story. She does not play an active role, but her presence reinforces the story’s mythology. In Greek tradition, Ariadne helps Theseus find a way out of the labyrinth through the famous thread, which implies that, in a way, she contributed to the death of Asterion. Although Borges does not give her a voice or a leading role in the story, her mention adds a tragic dimension to the tale, reminding us that the narrated events obey a destiny already traced out by mythology.
The men who enter the house every nine years play a symbolic role in the story. Asterion sees them as figures without identity, as presences who arrive only to be eliminated in a ceremony whose meaning he does not question. They do not seem to resist or confront him, and one of them, in his agony, utters the prophecy about the redeemer, introducing the theme of destiny that gives meaning to Asterion’s wait. Although they are anonymous and secondary characters, their presence underlines the Minotaur’s condemnation: a repetitive and absurd existence in which he can only fulfill the role that has been assigned to him without understanding its meaning.
Finally, the Queen, the mother of Asterion, is only mentioned at the beginning, in Apollodorus’ quote that introduces the story: “And the queen gave birth to a son who was named Asterion.” This mention is enough to establish the protagonist’s noble origin and connection to Greek mythology, where Queen Pasiphae is the mother of the Minotaur. Although his role in the story is minimal, his existence reinforces the idea that Asterion belongs to a royal lineage, accentuating his separation from the ordinary world and his tragic destiny.
Commentary and analysis of The House of Asterion by Jorge Luis Borges
The House of Asterion story plays with the reader’s perception and constructs an enigmatic narrative only revealed in its last paragraph. Borges introduces us to the mind of Asterion, a character who speaks with conviction about his world, without us being able at first to fully understand who he is or where he is. His discourse, impregnated with arrogance, ingenuity, and melancholy, leads us to walk with him through the corridors of his immense house and share his solitude without us suspecting the true identity hidden behind his voice. As the story progresses, the reader finds himself trapped in an undefined space that seems to extend to infinity and is also a prison. The final revelation transforms everything we have read: Asterion is not a man but the Minotaur of Greek myth, and his home is the labyrinth of Crete.
One of the most striking aspects of the story is how Borges uses the perspective of the protagonist to subvert the traditional image of the Minotaur. In classical mythology, the Minotaur is a violent monster inhabiting the center of the labyrinth and is defeated by the hero Theseus. However, in Borges’ story, the monster is a tragic character, trapped in his existence and unable to understand his destiny. Asterion is not a bloodthirsty beast but a lonely, misunderstood creature who lives in a world he has not chosen and does not fully understand. His description of his house as a limitless space, full of repetitions, gives the impression of a meaningless universe where each place is identical to the last, and time seems to stand still. His loneliness is such that he invents games to distract himself, imagines another Asterion’s presence, and awaits his redeemer’s arrival without knowing what that means.
The story also invites reflection on perception and identity. Asterion describes himself with a mixture of pride and vulnerability: he feels different from others, mentions his royal lineage, and despises the life of ordinary men, but at the same time, he is afraid of the outside world and is unable to communicate with others. His isolation distorts his view of the world; he does not understand the function of his confinement or why people fear him. When he talks about the nine men who enter his house every nine years, he says that he “frees them from all evil,” suggesting that he is not even aware that he is killing them. His perspective is so alien to that of others that he does not understand the meaning of his actions. The final revelation reinforces this disconnect: Asterion never knew that his redeemer was, in fact, his executioner.
Borges constructs the story with precision in using words and masterfully handling ambiguity. Throughout the story, he leaves subtle clues that only make sense when we reach the last line. The image of the labyrinth, the reference to human sacrifices, Asterion’s obsession with repetition, and the distorted perception of the world are elements that, when reread, fit together like pieces of a puzzle. The way it is narrated also contributes to its impact: the use of the first person makes us feel close to Asterion, introduces us to his mind, and allows us to see him as a human being before discovering his true nature.
Beyond its literary value, the story has a philosophical dimension that invites multiple interpretations. The idea of the labyrinth as a symbol of existence, the distorted perception of reality, loneliness as a curse, and inevitable destiny are themes that run through the story. Asterion is a character trapped in his mind, incapable of seeing the world in any other way and waiting for something without knowing what it is. His destiny is already written, but he never understands it. In this sense, the story suggests that sometimes the worst punishment is not death but the absolute incomprehension of one’s existence.
The House of Asterion is a classic tale that transforms into a reflection on identity, loneliness, and destiny. Borges plays with the reader’s perspective to show us the Minotaur inside his labyrinth, not as a monster but as a tragic being, a prisoner of a meaningless world. The last line completely changes our understanding of the story and forces us to rethink it in a new light. It is a story that invites us to question what it means to be free, what it means to be a prisoner, and to what extent our perception of reality can be limited by how we see the world.
