The Garden of Forking Paths
This is another story within a story. Of a Chinese man working with Germany. A spy. Newly in possession of a secret he must share with his Chief, he resolves to do so, despite how horrible the act, despite a lack of allegiance with Germany. Just because he can, and to show that he can.
The internal story is the reason behind the title. Tsun’s ancestor, Tsui Pen, long ago had forsook everything that made him… him, in order to spend the last 13 years of his life on a novel, and on a labyrinth. Only through Stephen Albert, the Sinologist and Tsui Pen enthusiast, do we find out the truth: that the novel and the labyrinth were one and the same. After all, Pen’s goal had been to construct an infinite labyrinth. A physical one would not do. Instead, his labyrinth is the unveiling of infinitely forking time. Of the many worlds which branch and merge and branch again. In one branch, the army wages battle in a darkly forested mountain, in another, at a glamorous celebration. In both, they fight to victory and to the death.
As Albert tells this story, Tsun begins to sense the multitudes, infinities, of “hims,” at different points in this garden of forking paths. In this path, he chooses to complete his plan, murdering Albert as cyphertext for the city that his Chief must bomb.
Takeaways
- This seems to be both a commentary on time and fate, as well as on the forces, invisible hands if you will, which direct us to do things; even things we believe to be atrocious.
- Perhaps in life, our goal should be to not blindly take the left at every turn. Not to accept that the future already exists. But rather to pick the path consciously. With courage.
Questions
- Why this combination of stories? Should we as the reader be picturing the alternative paths? The ones in which Yu Tsun surrenders?
- Why not make it even more self referential? Why not have the internal story be a metaphor for what would happen in the base story?
- One path in which Tsun fulfills his atrocious undertaking, another where he
- What did the delayed attack date have to do with anything?
- Does the quote "the remainds of the day worked on me" have anything to do with the book?
Quotes
Seems like a metaphor. Tsun is taking the left at every turn, blindly following his commitments to a country he feels no allegiance to. Sure, this will leave him at the central point of the labyrinth, but is that really where he wants to be?
Despite all this forking paths business, Yu Tsun, as he expressed earlier, has already convinced himself that his future was as permanent as the past. However, wasn’t the point of the forking paths that the past isn’t as solid as it seems? That all that we can be sure of is now.
Things I liked
- His use of an internal story (similarly to Tlon, Uqbar, Orgbis Tertius)