The Final Footnote (Situational Irony)
"The Library of Babel" ends with a metafictional twist in the inclusion of a footnote at the bottom of the final page of the story. The footnote reads in part, "...the vast Library is pointless; strictly speaking, all that is required is a single volume...that would consist of an infinite number of infinitely thin pages" (118). Rather than tying up the narrative, the footnote causes the reader to question whether the story they've just read is indeed a narrative at all, or whether it was merely a thought experiment—and, as the footnote suggests, a bad one, which could be replaced with something simpler.
