Blog Post #11 - "The Garden of Forking Paths"

“The Garden of Forking Paths”, by Jorge Luis Borges, was pretty interesting to me. As I was reading, I found myself to be confused for the most part, but I was able to piece together some information and form a general idea of what was going on. At the end of the piece, however, I got some closure, and kind of summed it all up. From what I gathered, the narrator had to let Berlin know the name of the “secret city” they must attack, and the narrator felt the only way to do so was to murder a man whose name was the name of desired city. In doing so, however, the narrator seemed to get close to this man because he owned and had studied the riddle that the narrator’s ancestor had written. Together, these two find meaning in the riddle, and it opens up new ideas to the narrator.

I did pick out a section that I found “significant”, if you will. It’s on the bottom of the second page. It doesn’t really correspond to what I have previously spoke of, but oh well.

“I told myself that the duel had already begun and that I had won the first encounter by frustrating, even if for forty minutes, even if by a stroke of fate, the attack of my adversary. I argued that this slightest of victories foreshadowed a total victory.”

I believe this is alluding to when the narrator first narrowly escapes being seen by Madden. But, in a broader sense, I feel this passage can apply to any person reading this piece of literature. If you feel you’ve won even the littlest battle, you can feel as if you can assure overall victory. This may not be too significant in relation to this story, but it stuck out to me while reading.