The Garden of Forking Paths - Book Report/Review Example

Absorbed in these illusory images, I forgot my destiny of one pursued. I felt myself to be, for an unknown period of time, an abstract perceiver of the world". Time becomes lateral here, Tsun exists in two different times.But the true significance of the labyrinth motif in this story is revealed when Albert announces his conclusion that Ts'ui Pen's book is also the labyrinth he had set out to create. The pen had taken characters and events and had seen the possibilities of various choices of each event and followed each and every possibility to its end, omitting none.

Time thus became multi-linear within the universe of Pen's literary creation, an entity that allowed for different paths to be chosen at each tiny instant. Ironically, Albert describes Pen's work thus: " In the work of Ts'ui Pn, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for the other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts, you are my enemy, in another, my friend." Tsun shoots Albert in a sardonic moment, choosing to be the enemy.

Albert's death making it to the newspaper associated with Tsun's name is the only way Tsun can complete his mission. But armed with the knowledge of multi-linearity and multi-sequentiality of time, Tsun feels that he has chosen one of the many possibilities in this space-time, and there are other "times" where he has the ability to choose differently: where he is not Albert's enemy, but his friend, where Albert is alive, not dead. With this multi-linearity of time, a protagonist doesn't just get one chance at getting it right, individual choice is not so consequential.

Tsun is able to say, "The rest is unreal, insignificant", because he had taken one of the forks of the garden path, and there were many others that were being followed in other "times". The labyrinth here becomes not only a symbol of multi-linear time but also of the insignificance of human effort in linear time. Though Borges takes the reader through one branch of linear time where Tsun is arrested and sentenced to death, he indicates the likelihood of many other unspoken parallel possibilities in parallel times.

Through the labyrinth of parallel times in his fictional narrative, Borges shows that in art it is possible to supersede the cause-and-effect world, where there is a necessity to make a single clear choice out of many possible options. In the Borgesian world, reality exists as a labyrinth of time, the possible choices of action at any particular event are endless, and there may be a space-time where Madden may never catch up with Tsun.