Language
Borges was not only an author, but also translated works from English, French, German, Old English, and Old Norse into Spanish. He grew up bilingual in Spanish and English and learned these other languages while attending school in Switzerland. These early childhood experiences left him with a great fascination with language, and the theme of language appears in many of his stories.
In "The Library of Babel" it is stated that there are books in the library written in every language that exists, and the author comes to the conclusion that many or perhaps all of the books could be read in different languages to have different meanings, provided the languages use the same alphabet. In one strange moment of the story, the narrator directly asks the reader whether they think they understand what the narrator is writing, since it could be one of these texts with different meanings in different languages. This effect is compounded by the fact that the story has supposedly been translated by a fictional editor/translator, which is evidenced by the fact that the books in the Library are all written in a language with twenty-two letters and two types of punctuation, while the story, whether read in Spanish or English, is in a language with more than twenty-two letters and varied punctuation. Through the discomfort caused by this moment in the text and the narrator's musings about the many languages in the books in the Library, the reader is forced to think about the way language and translation mediate the relationship between an author's meaning and a reader's understanding.
Infinity
Like language, infinity is another theme Borges uses in many of his stories. These stories, including The Garden of Forking Paths, The Circular Ruins, and The Aleph, often describe infinitely repeating space. From the first sentence of "The Library of Babel," Borges sets up the Library as a symbol of our universe. Thus, as Borges explores the "indefinite, perhaps infinite" (118) nature of the Library throughout the story, he is reflecting on the ways infinity and indefiniteness manifest in our world. Of particular importance is the narrator's ability to conceptualize the infiniteness of the Library only intellectually; since he can only experience a tiny part of the Library in his lifetime, it is through inductive reasoning that he comes to believe the Library is infinite and not merely indefinite.
The theme of infinity is also shown through the symbol of mirrors. The narrator notes that there is a small mirror which "faithfully duplicates appearances" (112) present in each room of the Library. The narrator remarks that some librarians think this signals that the Library is not infinite, while he himself sees it as "a figuration and promise of the infinite" (112). The mirror's ability to duplicate a room and create "more" of the library out of nothing gives the narrator a concrete hint of how the library itself might go on infinitely.
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being." Borges uses the Library to symbolize the universe we live in, and through explaining the makeup and boundaries of the Library, he is, in effect, doing metaphysics.
The physical space of the Library consists of a vast number of nearly identical hexagonal rooms, like an infinitely large honeycomb. This implies that though the universe is vast, there is a structure to it, and we can imagine that what we have not experienced is similar to what we have experienced. Borges does not specify what the books of the Library parallel in our reality, but since they are defined by the random sequence of twenty-five symbols on their covers and pages, it can be speculated that they represent the varied organisms in our universe that have evolved from the same fundamental elements and genetic structures. Finally, the narrator muses on the existence and possible extinction of librarians. Librarians, in this analogy, are an allegory for man, and these questions parallel those that humans have pondered for thousands of years regarding the creation of man and the future of humanity. While the narrator says that it is unclear whether the librarians exist in the library by "the work of chance or of malevolent demiurges" (113), he is sure that the Library will continue existing in quite the same state it does at the present time in the story, even if the librarians die out (118). This implies that whether one believes in creation or evolution, it must be acknowledged that the world was not created explicitly for humans.
Labyrinths
The theme of labyrinths is so prominent in the literary works of Borges that it was chosen as a name for a 1962 collection of his short stories, which includes "The Library of Babel" as the third story. Borges uses labyrinths, which are defined by Merriam-Webster as both "a place constructed of or full of intricate passageways and blind alleys" and "something extremely complex or tortuous," to represent life and the universe as complicated and difficult to examine as a whole. In "The Library of Babel," many librarians spend their whole lives moving between nearly identical rooms, but the narrator notes that even after a lifetime of searching for a particular book, he is "preparing to die, a few leagues from the hexagon where I was born" (112). Through the fact that the narrator has only witnessed a tiny part of the infinite Library, Borges suggests that each human will only get to experience a small amount of the mysteries and possibilities of life.
Sameness and difference
By the end of "The Library of Babel," the narrator has come to believe that for the Library to by infinite, the books within it must repeat. This means that not only are there books in the library that are nearly identical—off by just one letter on one page—but there are infinitely many exact duplicates of every book. Thus, one must believe that in our universe there is also a lack of individual identity on a grand scale.
Borges also shows that things that look identical can be different. The narrator ponders whether some or all of the books in the library could have different meanings depending on the language one reads them in. This shows that the idea of individual identity is created through an interplay of appearance and perception.
Religion
"The Library of Babel" is full of religious allusions and allegories, beginning with the title. The story of the tower of Babel, which the title of the story alludes to, is contained in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament. The story tells of a time when all people spoke the same language and used this ability to communicate to work together on a tower that would go all the way to the heavens. God, feeling that humans were overstepping their bounds, scattered the people around the world and caused them to speak different languages. While the two stories are connected by themes of language, in Borges' story, we do not see God interfere in the affairs of man in any particular way.
In fact, the narrator of "The Library of Babel" questions the role of God in the universe. He believes that God definitely created the Library, but may not have created librarians (113). Furthermore, he scorns those who try to find meaning or religious truth in certain books, though he admits that he too searched for a certain book, the "catalog of catalogs" (112) when he was younger. The story shows that people who are devoutly committed to their religion can be driven to extremes, murdering, destroying property, and committing suicide because of their search for meaning.
When the narrator lists the books that must exist in the Library, many are religious texts. Included in the examples of books that must exist are: "the detailed history of the future, the autobiographies of the archangels, the faithful catalog of the Library, thousands and thousands of false catalogs, the proof of the falsity of those false catalogs, a proof of the falsity of the true catalog, the gnostic gospel of Basilides, the commentary upon that gospel, the commentary on the commentary on that gospel, the true story of your death..." (115). Listing potential religious texts along with texts explicitly called true and false casts doubt upon whether religious texts accepted by certain religions are true.
Order
In "The Library of Babel," the idea of order is introduced as both a contrast and a complement to the idea of randomness. By the end of the story, the narrator seems to have gotten to the root discomfort of the Library being infinite: since what each librarian in the Library has experienced causes them to think the Library is random, senseless, and disorganized, they each have trouble believing there is order at a higher level. The author, while able to accept intellectually there is order to the Library on a larger scale, is worn down emotionally by the struggle to find meaning and sense in the lower-level disorder. He compares the experience of one who is able to see the order of the Library laid out (the so-called Book-Man) to heaven and his experience, unable to even confirm that there is order, to hell (117).
Borges calls particular attention to the theme of order at the end of the story. He writes, "If an eternal traveler should journey in any direction, he would find after untold centuries that the same volumes are repeated in the same disorder—which, repeated, becomes order: the Order" (118). The repetition and capitalization of the word gives it a sense of grandness. Furthermore, since the word "order" is used and sometimes capitalized in religious contexts, this same quote ties the narrator's desire for sense and repetition in the Library to a yearning for assurance in old age through religious faith.
