[2][3] However, Hladík's main concern soon turns to his unfinished play, The Enemies, the story of a nineteenth-century man caught in a strange, repeating loop of experiences.
After an initial day of panic, he understands that God has answered his prayer, giving him an additional year of subjective time, though no one else will realize that anything unusual has happened – the "secret miracle" of the story's title.
[10] Critic Edna Aizenberg has noted that though Borges is often considered an author who focuses on "irreality" rather than social concerns, "The Secret Miracle" is firmly rooted in the Holocaust; Hladík is arrested at the start of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and sentenced to death in large part for being Jewish.
[10] John Fraser reads the story as similarly rooted in historical concerns, arguing that Hladik gives a model of how art can be used to transcend contemporary geopolitical horrors.
[12] Along with another Borges story, "The Circular Ruins", "The Secret Miracle" was an influence on the Christopher Nolan science fiction film Inception, in which varying time perception inside and outside dreams plays a major plot role.