The first-person narrator represents the internal and private individual. He enjoys hourglasses, maps, 18th-century typography, and the prose of Robert Louis Stevenson. He walks the streets of Buenos Aires, trying to maintain his own preferences. He feels a sense of loss as his public counterpart grows more dominant, realizing his personal identity is slowly fading into obscurity.

Borges acts as the public persona of the renowned Argentinian author. He exists primarily in biographical dictionaries and academic rosters. Readers and critics construct this figure, viewing him as an impersonal entity. He serves as a living vessel for literature, continuously absorbing the personal interests of the inner self to create his public image.

Benedict de Spinoza is a 17th-century Dutch Jewish philosopher. He proposes a pantheistic view where existence and nature operate as interconnected forces. His concepts shape the narrator's understanding of determinism and the persistence of existence.