The Library
Borges purposefully spends a great deal of time, especially in the beginning of the story, detailing exactly how the Library looks. This spans from larger elements such as ventilation shafts, bookshelves, and corridors down to minuscule aspects such as the placement of light bulbs and approximate number of letters on each page of the books filling the shelves. Being shown the Library at this level of detail underscores just how important the setting is to this story. Furthermore, since we know the Library contains an infinite number of these nearly identical rooms, having the room described in such detail perhaps makes it easier to imagine the infinite.
Librarians' Emotions
As the narrator takes the reader through the philosophical ideas librarians have devised about the Library over the generations, he also describes the emotional reactions of the librarians to these discoveries. The narrator uses strong language to show the high highs and low lows that accompanied the librarians' beliefs that they had found the answers to life's biggest questions, or realizing the magnitude of all that they didn't understand. For example, the narrator writes that "When it was announced that the Library contained all books, the first reaction was unbounded joy...There was no personal problem, no world problem, whose eloquent solution did not exist" (115). The narrator contrasts this with the reactions of librarians not long after, writing "The certainty that some bookshelf in some hexagon contained precious books, yet that those precious books were forever out of reach, was almost unbearable...They would invade the hexagons...leaf disgustedly through a volume, and condemn entire walls of books" (116). By showing and contrasting these vivid emotional reactions, Borges allows the reader to vicariously experience the joy and depression wrapped up in the contemplation of the infinite.
