"All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players " comes to mind after reading Borges's piece. Although Kilpatrick played the role of saint in the public's eyes, he was ultimately the villian. I found it heartbreaking and somewhat humorous the amount of work put into making Kilpatrick's death seem like a noble one; the lengths some will go to cover up a secret is astounding.
The short story in itself has many references to other works; as Ryan is slowly piecing together the events that led up to Kilpatrick's demise, he discovers the "parallelisms" between Kilpatrick and Julius Caesar. Nolan takes ideas from Shakespeare's Macbeth and Julius Caesar to plan the whole spectacle. This is, of course, is done quite deliberately as a way of Nolan's to have someone discover Kilpatrick's truth one day. Still, the idea of fabricating a world to maintain appearances would make anyone wonder if anything in their life is true.
There is a tone of irony and even humor in the piece; Kilpatrick assigns Nolan to discover the traitor knowing the possibility of being found out himself. On the other hand, this could have been done purposely by Kilpatrick. The reference to Yeats's poem The Tower made me wonder about such a possibility. In researching a bit, it seems as though the speakers in both works encounter a similar dilemma. Much like Kilpatrick has to choose between dying a hero at the hands of Nolan or dying a traitor at the hands of the people, the speaker in Yeats's poem feels the need to choose between poetry and reason.
Perhaps Borges includes this piece of Yeats's text to display its possible inspiration to him. I think it just continues to proves intertextuality in all its forms and how it occurs throughout history.
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