Notes on "The Garden of Forking Paths"

This post supports the study of the Module 2, Short Fiction, of the Core Course “Modes of Fiction”, assigned for the Semester 3 students of the MA English programme at CMS College. 

The Garden of Forking Paths

Read through for some insights on:

Romance Languages

Latin America

Argentina

The author

The story

Characters

Summary

Analysis of the story

Romance Languages: Languages derived from Latin or a subset of the Romance language family  –including Spanish and Portuguese, and sometimes French

Latin American regions

Latin America: Countries like Spain and Portugal, which used the Romance languages, were colonial powers. So, these languages got established in their American colonies. American regions where Romance languages are primarily spoken came to be known as Latin America.

Argentina: A republic in South America. The second largest country in Latin America. The largest among the Spanish speaking nations (Hispanophone). Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina. 

Spanish colonization of Argentina began in 1512.

The Author:

Jorge Luis Borges. Pronounced HOR-hay LWEES BHOR-hays. 

Childhood and Parentage:

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on August 24, 1899. Shortly after his birth, his family relocated to Palermo, a suburb on the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires. In those days, the place was known for its loose and criminal background, and the author grew up amidst stories of knife-fights and violence – images which were to find reflections in his writings. His father was a lawyer and a psychology teacher whose personal beliefs were founded in anarchy. His mother was descended from a long line of soldiers and freedom fighters; her own mother had furnished their home with family artifacts such as swords, uniforms, and portraits of great freedom fighters. Borges was terribly fond of both of his parents.

Borges had his lessons of philosophy from his father, who once helped him understand Zeno’s paradox using a chessboard.

Eg: Paradox of Place:

"… if everything that exists has a place, place too will have a place, and so on ad infinitum."

The author has commented that the household was so bilingual that he was not even aware that English and Spanish were separate languages until later in his childhood.

Borges’s younger sister Norah, his junior by two years, was his only real childhood friend. Together they spent their time roaming the labyrinthine library and the garden, two images which would find endless incarnations in his writing. 

 It wasn’t until much later, returning to Buenos Aires after spending seven years in Europe, that Borges admitted to himself that “for years I believed I had grown up in a suburb . . . of risky streets and visible sunsets. The truth is I grew up in a garden, … and in a library of unlimited English books.”

The story for our study has reflections of many of these aspects:

📌 Military background    📌 Patriotism    📌 Anarchism and violence    📌 Paradox

📌 Garden    📌 Books and library    📌 Labyrinth

The Story:

The Garden of Forking Paths is a 1941 short story, and is the title story of a collection.  It became the first of Borges' stories to appear in English, translated by sci-fi writer Anthony Boucher in 1948 for the American publication Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. 

Characters:

Yu Tsun: Chinese. Now a spy for Germany, in World War I.

Stephen Albert: An English man. A Sinologist. Interested in the study of the works and philosophy of Ts’ui Pen.

Ts’ui Pen: Great grandfather of Yu Tsun.

Captain Richard Madden: An Irishman, fighting for the English. (parallel to Yu Tsun, a Chinese, working for Germany. Like Yu Tsun, he also has to prove his worth before those who above him.)

The Chief: The superior German officer to whom Yu Tsun has to report.

Summary:

Context: World War I

An anonymous narrator introduces a document that will, he assures us, shed a little light on why a British offensive against the Germans had to be delayed by thirteen days. The document is a deposition (oral testimony given by a witness to be used in a trial) given by Dr. Yu Tsun. The first two pages are missing, so its narration begins abruptly.

Having learned that his cover as a German spy in London has been blown, Yu Tsun has only minutes to plan his next move. He must escape from Captain Richard Madden, the Irishman who has murdered his co-conspirator in espionage, and complete his mission by delivering the location of a secret cache of British weapons to his boss in Germany, whom he refers to as The Chief. He checks the contents of his pockets – revealing a revolver with only one bullet – locates the address of the one person capable of passing on his missive, and runs to catch a train to the suburbs.

Madden nearly catches up with Yu Tsun at the station, but he misses the train, filling Tsun with a sense of confidence that he will complete his mission successfully. At the Ashgrove stop, some creepy-looking children direct Tsun to the home of Dr. Stephen Albert. Tsun follows their instructions, finding himself following a continually forking road. He finally arrives at a pavilion, or summer house, from which he can hear the familiar sounds of Chinese music.

A man named Stephen Albert greets Yu Tsun, speaking Chinese, and invites him to see the "garden of forking paths." Tsun identifies himself as a descendent of the creator of that very garden. Dr. Albert tells Tsun the story of his ancestor, Ts'ui Pen, a former governor who abandoned his political position to write a novel and build a labyrinth, or maze. In the opinion of his descendents, Ts'ui Pen had failed on both accounts – the novel made no chronological sense, and the labyrinth was never found.

Stephen Albert, who has studied Ts'ui Pen's legacy for some time, explains to Yu Tsun that "the garden of forking paths" and the novel are one and the same and that the novel's seemingly incompatible storylines present the idea of the bifurcation, or splitting, of time, rather than space. In other words, whenever the characters come to a point at which more than one outcome is possible, both outcomes occur. This causes the narrative to branch out into multiple narrative universes, which then provide the scenarios for new bifurcations.

Seeing Captain Madden approach, Yu Tsun expresses his gratitude to Dr. Albert for resolving the mystery of Ts'ui Pen's garden, then shoots him in the back. Though Madden succeeds in arresting Yu Tsun, Tsun has succeeded in relaying his message – the secret weapons stash is in the city of Albert. Tsun reads about the bombing of Albert by the Germans in the British papers, the same papers in which The Chief was able to read the report of the murder of Dr. Albert by Yu Tsun.