"The Garden of Forking Paths"

Borges wrote many, many great short stories, but this is one of his best, and his most famous.

First published in 1941, in the collection of stories of the same name, "The Garden of Forking Paths" ("El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan") marked a turning point in the literary career of Jorge Luis Borges. In fact, the story helped to establish his reputation as a fiction writer.

His fiction received immediate critical acclaim in Argentina, even though he failed to win an important prize the year of the book's release. Outraged, other Argentinean writers and critics devoted an entire issue of the prominent literary journal, Sur, to Borges and his work.

Borges' popularity in North America and Europe never quite caught up to the mania people felt for him in his native Argentina. Unlike several of the writers who were inspired by him, Borges was never awarded a Nobel Prize in literature. Not a man to lose his sense of humor, Borges turned the snub into an opportunity for a joke, saying, "Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me".

Jorge Luis Borges didn't see much point in writing long novels. In fact, he once called the process "a laborious and impoverishing extravagance." A master of the short story, Borges made an art out of condensing all of the complexity of a lengthy tome into a neat little package of a few pages or so. By having his stories focus on the discussion of imaginary texts, Borges was able to postulate the existence of some really bizarre literature... The story "The Garden of Forking Paths" includes imaginary excerpts from one of Borges' most impossible literary inventions: a novel of infinite endings.

“This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time. . . . In the present one, which a favorable fate has granted me, you have arrived at my house; in another, while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost. . . . Time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures.” - "The Garden of Forking Paths"

Borges uses fiction as a vehicle to explore philosophical and literary issues. In "The Garden of Forking Paths," he uses the genre of the detective story—a genre that requires clue-gathering and puzzle-solving—in order to explore the way time branches into an infinite number of futures.

A great deal of this story is devoted to creating a spatial metaphor for time. In other words, Borges is trying to take an abstract, non-visual idea – time – and make a visual model for it.

Borges questioned the idea of life as a linear process or a single path in time and saw the nature of reality, space and time as realms with vast possibilities. It is very natural to think of time as a set line running from past to future; the future lies ahead and the past lies behind. Borges invites us to reject this linear picture and think of time as forking or branching. The branches represent possible futures. At each moment in time there are many possible branches and nothing is set as “the” future. The world itself branches. History is unfathomable and the future is unknowable.

He uses the idea that history branches out in an infinite number of different directions at every point in time and space. Every space-time “fork” is the center of branching paths, an ever-recurring moment/place of choice with profound effects on and links to everything else.

Multiple literary worlds, paths, and dimensions all occurring at once and allowing infinite possibilities, we can be whatever we can dream or imagine.

The non-linear storyline is an infinite labyrinth that realizes multiple paths and futures that still echo today. Some examples are: the branches of the world wide web (hypertext), computer and video games, Choose Your Own Adventure children’s books, television and movies such as Fringe and The One (Jet Li), quantum mechanics and even in the Theory of Evolution.

Works Cited

"El Jardín De Senderos Que Se Bifurcan." . N.p., 2012. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElJardínDeSenderosQueSeBifurcan.jpg>.

"Jorge Luis Borges." Simba Tango. N.p., 13 Nov 2010. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://simbatango.com/2010/11/13/jorge-luis-borges/>.

"Lost Forever." Shirt.Woot!. N.p., 16 Jan 2011. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://shirt.woot.com/Blog/ViewEntry.aspx?Id=15835>.

MacFarlane, John. "Truth in the Garden of Forking Paths."johnmacfarlane.net. N.p., 28 Jan 2007. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://johnmacfarlane.net/garden.pdf>.

Peckham, Mathew. "The Garden of Forking Paths." Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta's World Literature Website. N.p., 2002. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://fajardo- acosta.com/worldlit/borges/garden.htm

"The Garden of Forking Paths." dlux. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://www.dlux.org.au/tgofp/>.

"The Garden of Forking Paths." Enotes. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <"The Garden of Forking Paths." Shmoop. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar 2012. .>.

"The Garden of Forking Paths." Shmoop. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Mar 2012. <http://www.shmoop.com/garden-forking-paths/>.

The Garden of Forking Paths

Intro to

"The Garden of Forking Paths"

by Jorge Luis Borges