The Garden of Forking Paths

When Tsun empties his pockets in his room, he finds “just what I knew I was going to find” (213). One of the items is a letter he decides to destroy, though he adds “and which I did not destroy” (213). Why does Borges include this reference to a letter without revealing its contents? What might have been in the letter? Why doesn’t Tsun destroy it?

The protagonist claims, “I am a timorous man” (213). Tsun describes himself repeatedly as somehow weak, timorous, or fragile, but what is the actual textual evidence for Tsun’s self-characterization? What evidence shows him in a different light? What other adjectives would you use to describe him? Support these adjectives with context from the story.

When Albert reads excerpts from The Garden of Forking Paths to Tsun, each version ends with the refrain “Thus the heroes fought, with tranquil heart and bloody sword. They were resigned to killing and to dying” (217). These lines give us the only direct glimpse of the language in Tsun’s ancestor’s work. What do the lines mean in the context of Borges’s story? Do these words resonate for Tsun? Other than his ancestral link to their author, what in the text connects these words to Tsun?

The story’s last paragraph starts with Tsun’s statement that “[w]hat remains is unreal and unimportant” (220). What does remain? What does Tsun mean by this sentence?

Tsun predicts the world will soon be left only to “soldiers and bandits” (214). He suggests to those left in that world that “[w]hosoever would undertake some atrocious enterprise should act as if it were already accomplished, should impose on himself a future as irrevocable as the past” (214). Change the adjective “atrocious” to something else. If the original advice is intended for soldiers and bandits, who would be the audience for the altered advice? Imagine advice for poets and musicians, for healers and builders, for other pairs of people. How would the irrevocable future be changed with the alteration of a word?

Tsun’s deposition exists as an intentional fragment. Since this passage is an invention on Borges’s part, why didn’t he write a complete version of Tsun’s confession? What might have been included in the “first two pages” (212)? Why does he refute Tsun’s fictional account of Runeberg’s death with a fictional footnote?

Borges scholars have adapted many of his works into hypertext forms. Imagine adapting “The Garden of Forking Paths” using embedded links, cross references, or images. How would you translate the story into a website, enhancing its most important questions and features?

Create a work of fiction framed within a real context. You can use a historic text like Borges does in “The Garden of Forking Paths,” adding a chapter that does not exist in the real version. Or you can add a character to a novel, one that does not appear in the original published version. Or write an episode for a television series where the time or setting is completely different, or the characters’ habits and identities do not correspond to their usual ones.