Overview of "The Garden of Forking
Paths"

Critic: Diane Andrews Henningfeld
Source:
Criticism about: Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), also
known as: B. Suarez Lynch, B. Lynch Davis, H(onorio) Bustos
Domecq, Honorio Bustos Domecq, F(rancisco) Bustos, F.
Bustos, Francisco Bustos

The characters that exist in the pages of the text--no
matter how real they seem--are no more than ink on paper.
They have no existence before the beginning of the text, and
they have no future at the end of the text. They are, pure
and simple, creations of language and narration.

"The Garden of Forking Paths," first published in 1941 in the collection
of the same name, is a typically Borgesian story, if there is such a thing.
James Woodall, in his book The Man in the Mirror of the Book: A Life of
Jorge Luis Borges, maintains that the story "is the densest, and perhaps
philosophically most nihilistic, story Borges ever wrote."

Moreover, he contends that Borges constructs an elaborate discussion of
time, using "[s]inology, the philosophy of labyrinths and gardens,
espionage and premonition" to demonstrate the "essentially fictitious and
yet ... inescapable" nature of time.

Readers of Borges, therefore, are left with many questions when reading
this story. Is it a detective story? A philosophical treatise? Is it about
time? About future(s) in potential? To these questions, it is possible to
add one more: can "The Garden of Forking Paths" be read as an
example of metafiction, fiction that takes as its subject the creation of
fiction itself?

A metafictional text, according to Patricia Waugh in her book Metafiction:
The Theory and the Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction, is one that
"self-consciously and systematically draws attention to itself as an
artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction
and reality." "The Garden of Forking Paths" does this in a number of
ways.

In the first place, the story opens with a reference to a historical event
and a historical text, followed by the statement by Yu Tsun. This clearly
calls into question the "relationship between fiction and reality." By
suggesting that the statement to follow offers yet another historical
explanation for the event referred to in the historical text, Borges
undermines the truth of the historical text itself.

In addition, the impersonal narrator mentions that the first two pages of
the document are missing. The information serves to remind the reader
that what is to follow is a description of a series of events constructed
after the fact. That the two pages are missing also serves to remind the
reader that the editor of the statement can change and manipulate the
material in the statement.

The fact is further emphasized by the inclusion of a footnote early in the
story. The unnamed narrator corrects a statement made by Yu Tsun that
Richard Madden murdered Viktor Runeberg. The narrator tells the reader
that even the name used by Yu Tsun for Viktor Runeberg is incorrect. As
a result, the reader does not know which narrator to trust: the unnamed
opening narrator or Yu Tsun.

Indeed, the inclusion of the footnote forces the reader to question the
reality of the narrator, a violation of the unspoken agreement that
readers enter into with writers of realistic texts. Narrators have to at
least seem real or they cannot function as narrators.

As this further illustrates, metafictional texts often function at several
narrative levels. In other words, there are stories within stories within
stories in this text. At the first level, there is the unnamed narrator who
instructs the reader to connect Yu Tsun's statement with a passage from
a history text.

By naming the novel at the innermost narrative level The Garden of
Forking Paths, Borges call attention to the fact that there is yet another
narrative level above the unnamed primary narrator. That is, the story
itself, "The Garden of Forking Paths" contains the first narrator and all
of the narrative levels below it.

Therefore, if the novel at the center of the story is a fictional creation of
the fictional Ts'ui Pen, then the story "The Garden of Forking Paths" is
also a fictional creation. What, then, does this imply about Borges
himself? Is he suggesting that the author is a fictional creation, someone
constructed by the language and the reader?

Furthermore, metafictional texts differ from realistic texts in that they
often contain both contradictions and coincidences that force readers to
question the "reality" of the universe created by the writer. In a realistic
text, there is an agreement between the writer and the reader that the
reader will believe the world the writer has created as long as the writer
stays within the conventions of that fictional world. In a realistic text,
natural law must be obeyed and characters must act as if they were real
people.

However, in a metafictional text like "The Garden of Forking Paths,"
the coincidental nature of many of the events forces the reader to
accept that the story has no connection to reality. For example, Yu Tsun
picks a name out of a phone book. The person he chooses is a noted
sinologist who has spent years studying a novel written by Yu Tsun's
ancestor. Such coincidence calls attention to the fact that in the world
of fiction, anything can happen. The writer controls the story because it
is a story, not reality.

What a story like "The Garden of Forking Paths" reveals, then, is that
all fiction, whether realistic or fantastic, is a product of language. The
characters that exist in the pages of the text--no matter how real they
seem--are no more than ink on paper. They have no existence before the
beginning of the text, and they have no future at the end of the text.
They are, pure and simple, creations of language and narration.

Consequently, the implications that a metafictional text like "The Garden
of Forking Paths" finally introduce are profoundly disturbing. As the
character Yu Tsun tells the reader early in the story, "everything
happens to a man precisely, precisely now." Once an event is past, it
exists nowhere but in memory and narration.

Likewise, the future exists nowhere but in the imagination and in
narration. By calling attention to itself as fiction, the metafictional text
also calls attention to the nature of reality itself, at least suggesting that
the lines between fiction and the narration of lived experience are
perhaps fuzzier than anyone wants to admit.