[Spoilers for The Garden of Forking Paths]<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Borges\u2019 The Garden of Forking Paths ends in a tragedy. The death of Stephen Albert seems at once fated, yet coincidental. His death was due to an unfortunate coincidence in names, yet it seemed that fate brought the killer to him. Our protagonist Yu Tsun\u2019s arrival was expected and anticipated. The garden they spoke of was a creation of his ancestor. These are not the hallmarks of coincidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A surface reading might\nsuggest that this is an arbitrary framing device for the real subject of interest:\nthe concepts underlying the Garden of Forking Paths. The story, however, is\nconstructed with purpose. It traces lines through the philosophies of fate and\nluck, through the history of wars and cities, through the lives and deaths of\nfigures real and imagined, interpreting them through the lens of the titular garden.\nIf our universe is the garden, then fate and luck are but illusions – interpretations\nof the consequences of the forks in the path that we have witnessed. Albert had\nto die. Albert did not have to die. War was avoidable. War was unavoidable. There\nis no contradiction. There are many paths, but we can bear witness only to one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For Ts\u2019ui Pen, the garden is non-Newtonian. It rejects determinism and the ever-fixed causality of the Principia Mathematica. It embodies and foreshadows the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics<\/a> that would be conceived years after Borges\u2019 authoring of this story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite the implications of\nthe garden, Borges\u2019 story remains a singular narrative. This may seem to be a\nconstraint of its medium, but it is really a constraint of human consciousness.\nWe are not capable of simultaneity or omniscience. This remains true even for interactive\nnarratives. The interaction merely implies choice. It does not mean all\nnarratives are simultaneously canonical to the reader or simultaneously\nexperienced by the reader. In a moment of meditativeness, Yu Tsun almost feels\nthe presence of the \u2018multiverse\u2019, the many forms of himself and Albert in\nconversations veering off in different directions. However, he is pulled back\ninto his own world by the shadow of Captain Madden. Our own identities, fears\nand motivations, veil us from the many forks in the garden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n