This chapter frames the renunciation stories within the broader question of modern parables, which appeal to and yet also frustrate readers' longing for certain meaning, exemplarity, or revelation. In a post-transcendent context, the story's straightforward efficiency is lost, along with its spiritual or political agency. This chapter engages with the enigmatic nature of the parable-like variants on the Renunciation story, both in Borges and beyond, in parables by Kafka and Blixen.