In “The Garden of the Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges, one of the major themes is that of time and the possibilities it offers. In fact, this theme in “The Garden of the Forking Paths” can also be termed a motif, simply because time is one of the main structures in the story and the concept of it recurs quite often throughout the text. The forking path is one of the metaphors used in “The Garden of the Forking Paths” as it represents the alternate possibilities in time in the story.
In this short story by Jorge Luis Borges called “The Garden of the Forking Paths”, not only is the notion of time, but of possibilities in question. At any one moment we could be any number of places depending on decisions being made across the broad spectrum of time. The problem with this paradigm is, we cannot make decisions, or diverge onto one wing of a forked path without ignoring another or, as the narrator of “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges puts it, “In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pen, he chooses-simultaneously-all of them.
Given the laws of contingency based upon time and physics, we cannot create the labyrinth because it can only exist in a fictional format. We are always, like the author of “The Garden of the Forking Paths” Jorge Luis Borges, constrained by the notion of time and even if we are like him and do not mention it or address it directly, it still exists. What is missing from the story that is present in our lives is not chance or even contingency, but purposeful decisions. This short text takes a few readings because it does away with this convention that we so often take for granted. In fact, it seems that the narrator has simply made a decision-set a course of action to try to extend his life-and thus all other reactions spawn as a result of this. While we can know this, it is troublesome because throughout the story there is such a sense of inevitability.
We obviously know the end result and there are few chances we have to doubt whether or not the main character will die, but we hang on nonetheless. In many ways, this is much like my sense (and many others’ I would imagine) of life. We are constantly confronted with forked paths and we choose without ever giving any thought to the fact that multiple realities could exist. Like the narrator of “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Borges, we may know our destiny once we’ve turned down the path but we turn away, believing that perhaps other things-different contingencies-will somehow alter the inevitable.
