The Garden of Forking Paths

Borges’s short story collection “The Garden of Forking Paths” are the stories Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius and The Garden of Forking Paths. Within Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Borges introduces the question of metaphysical time and reality by recounting the events surrounding the mysterious land of Uqbar and its lore surrounding Tlon- the third orb. On the other hand, The Garden of Forking Paths questions the knowledge of the universe and linear time as current scientific exploration knows, familiarizing the reader to the idea of ‘forking paths’, multiple timelines that converge, diverge, and parallel one another that are explored through the perspective of a German spy named Dr. Yu Tsun and why an Allied assault was delayed…

I’ve decided to complete Short Assignment #4, for this week’s reading, The Garden of Forking Paths. I feel that the New Historicism Analysis would work well because it analyzes the cultural, historical, and social aspects of our reading. 1. This work illustrates its cultural context through the writer’s personal point of view as an undercover Chinese spy working for Germans during World War II. The Chinese spy leaves his post once he is discovered to pursue a mission where he must communicate…

In the first short story, The Garden of Forking Paths, the narrator is in fact the main character. Yu Tsun was a military man working for the German army, though he is Chinese by decent. He is the ancestor of a great and confusing writer, Ts’ui Pen. He is telling us the story from his point of view as it happens to him. This means that in this particular story the narrator knows about the same as us in the large scale. Though he may know more little details, the main point of the story unfolds…

Stephen explains that a book with identical first and last pages can be considered circular and thus infinite because the last page will lead the reader back to the first continuously. For an example, Stephen references the Arabian Nights. He specifically makes mention to the time when Scheherazade begins to retail the story of the Arabian Nights from the beginning in the middle of the text. He also explains that the text The Garden of Forking Paths shows the infinite outcomes of a single event,…

Through literature, specifically “The Aleph” and “The Garden of Forking Paths”, Borges attempts to explore the different ways to articulate the topic of infinite time and space by placing distinct attention to certain aspects. Though Borges develops his short stories in various ways to bring such fantastical ideas to the center, they arrive at a similar point as the incredible nature of these notions are lost because reality cannot sustain all the infinite possibilities. Through the…

Edgar Allen Poe and Jorge Luis Borges are two very renowned writers whose writing styles are similar yet oddly different. Poe likes to expand on the idea that “nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive shrewdness,” as illustrated in his 1846 short story “The Purloined Letter.” Borges, on the other hand, exemplifies how life is a labyrinth in his 1941 short story “The Garden of Forking Paths.” While Poe uses a suspiciously playful tone, Borges goes for a more anxious tone. While Poe…

The Garden of Motivation In difficult situations, people attempt to rationalize harsh tasks before completing them. In Jorge Luis Borges's fictional short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” a Chinese man named Yu Tsun is forced to spy against the British during World War I for Germany. His mission is to reveal the location of the city named Albert, a task he completes by murdering Stephen Albert, a man with the same last name. It is clear from the story that Yu Tsun has reservations about…

“Life is very mysterious and there are many things we don’t know. And there are elements of magic realism in every culture, everywhere. It’s just accepting that we don’t know everything and everything is possible” by Isabel Allende. Relevantly, magic realism was practiced in Latin America, it goes beyond reality to express impossible ideas. During the mid-1900s, an Argentinian author, Jorge Luis Borges, wrote the short story “The Circular Ruins”, this story illustrates the dreams of light and…

orge Luis Borges is a notable Argentine writer born in Buenos Aires and has written many short fictions that connects to our life and their goals. He has also written renowned essays and poems one of them being iconoclastic. One of his oldest fictions he has written was “The South” and “The Shape of the Sword” which was written in 1944. Later on in his life, Borges wrote the “The Captive”, “The Inferno” and “Dream Tigers” in 1960 with “Blue Tigers” written later in his carer in 1983. In 1935,…

My research centers on Jorge Luis Borges and constructs a web of influences on him and his literary oeuvre through examining his many interviews. Throughout his life, Borges consented to hundreds of interviews. Rather than undertaking exhaustive research, I gathered data from nine of Borges’ most widely available interviews, largely conducted in English and issued in prominent, English-language publications. Some interviewers transcribed the interview content in the moment or from tape…