The
Forking Paths of Betrayal
In
the short story, “The Garden of Forking Paths,” Jorge Luis Borges complicates
the life of a spy who works for a country he dislikes in order to bring honor
to his heritage. The main character knows
that he is going to be apprehended by the British for spying on them for
Germany and makes a final desperate move in hopes to prove a Chinese man could
help win the war for Germany. In order
to send a message back to Germany, he has to kill a man with the name of a
particular city, and there is only one man in the phone book with this name. While the spy knows information about the
British, other people in the story have access to his personal thoughts without
him ever sharing them.
When the spy
arrives at the train station near Dr. Albert’s house, a group of children greet
him with the knowledge of where he is going. At the station while “a lamp lit
the platform…the children’s faces remained in a shadow” (317). The children lurk in the shadows, adding to
the ominous description. The spy arrives
and says one word to the children on the platform: “Ashgrove?” They confirm he
is at the correct station and he gets out onto the platform. Here, an outside force comes into play, as the
children seem to know exactly where he is going. One child asks him “’are you going to Dr.
Stephen Albert’s house?’ without waiting for [his] answer another said: ‘the
house is a good distance away but you wont get lost if you take the road to the
left and bear to the left at every crossroad’” (317). The unexplained knowledge of the group of
children complicates the premise that the spy is the person with the secret
information. These children not only
have divined where the spy is going, but they tell him how to get there. These children represent fate, a force in
which the spy wholeheartedly believes.
He uses the word “implacable” to describe the possibility of his death
(315). He believes that fate cannot be
satisfied until he dies. The children
help him to kill the doctor by giving him directions, but by killing the doctor
he is revealing himself and thereby killing himself.
While spies are
characterized by their deceit, this spy does not feel as he has a choice. He spies for someone he hates and kills
someone innocent because he believes there are no other options for bringing honor
to his country. It is the job of the spy
to get information without ever letting the people around him know how he got
the information. The children have information about the spy, and there is no
way to know how they got their information.
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