Monday, October 28, 2013

The Forking Paths of Betrayal


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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