Borges’ Use of Intertextuality and Labyrinths in The Garden of Forking Paths

“The Garden of Forking Paths” is a short story written by Jorge Luis Borges. He writes with a misleading technique that includes several mazes, missing pages and literary devices. The protagonist of the story is a man named Tsun, a Chinese, English Professor who is a spy for the German army. Throughout the story, the reader is able to figure out that Tsun is in a labyrinth, while in a race to complete his mission. He has to inform the whereabouts of the British artillery to the Germans, before getting caught. While on this mission, Tsun encounters his past and is thrown into another labyrinth, his ancestor’s work. To complete both mazes, he must kill Steven Albert who is connected to Tsun in more ways than one. Tsun’s ancestor is also the man Steven Albert has been studying. They learn of their connection when Tsun meets Albert for the mere reason of killing him, to inform the Germans. This paper addresses Borges’ random forms of intertextuality, as well as incorporating two forms of labyrinths, causing the reader to become caught in one's own maze of trying to untangle the hidden meanings behind Borges’s story.

Borges uses the form of intertextuality to bring in other texts throughout his own short story, by showing the relationships between the two. The reader first encounters intertextuality when Borges compares the relationship between the works of Liddell Hart’s World War One stories and the one he writes for the protagonist of his story, Tsun. Liddell Hart was a British soldier and went on to write his own story about his experiences that ended up in Borges’s story. On the complete opposite side, Borges writes about protagonist Tsun who is a German spy trying to escape Captain Richard Madden and complete his mission of informing Germany where the artillery base is. While on his mission, Tsun meets Steven Albert at “The Garden of Forking Paths”, where the reader gets caught in another form of intertextuality, the novel written by Ts'ui Pen. Their encounter is due to his name, which is also the name of the British artillery, but their connection between them goes far deeper. Albert spent years studying Ts'ui Pen’s failed novel and labyrinth who realizes that the novel is the labyrinth. The novel is found to be a metaphor for what Ts'ui Pen imagines time to be and how all outcomes lead to the same possibilities. This plays into Tsun’s life, when he has to decide if he should kill Albert. Within Borges's story, the use of intertextuality, makes it hard for the reader to fully understand what is going until they follow the maze written in the story. Borges takes many different paths when he starts comparing Lidell Hart's work to his own protagonist Tsun and then again when he compares Tsun’s life to the novel written by Ts'ui Pen.

Borges uses both metaphorical and literal labyrinths to pull the reader through the maze of his story. A labyrinth is a complicated matrix of paths that make it difficult for one to find their way. Tsun’s journey is a metaphorical labyrinth which he walks through in order to complete his mission. His journey makes many twists and turns as he tries to escape Captain Richard Madden and then is led directly to Steven Albert by children. When Tsun arrives at his destination, “The Garden of Forking Paths” created by his ancestor Ts'ui Pen, the reader learns that he has just walked into a literal labyrinth. Steven Albert informs Tsun that the novel and “The Garden of Forking Paths” created by Ts'ui Pen are one within themselves. By themselves the two labyrinths are useless but together they show the universe and the many directions it can lead to. The use of many labyrinths make it difficult for the reader to understand the full story, until they dig deeper into the meaning behind them. Tsun has many different paths that he could have taken.

In conclusion, the “The Garden of Forking Paths” can confuse the reader with the many hidden labyrinths within one another and the use of intertextuality. To fully understand the short story, in depth reading needs to be done to realize the connections the characters have with one another. The connection between Steven Albert and Tsun leads the reader directly to the main labyrinth “The Garden of Forking Paths”. Despite all the connections between the two, Tsun’s mission was to kill Albert. When Albert's death was published in the newspapers, Tsun knew his mission was complete. It allowed Germany to know he was passing along the information so they could win the war.