The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges

How does the absence of the first two pages affect our understanding and appreciation of the rest of the story?

The absence of the first two pages gives the story the feeling of authenticity, as though the papers were really just found, not written right then. It also gives it more of a realistic feel through the lack of information given to the reader. In fiction writing the author spends time to make sure the reader knows who the characters are and what they are doing, but in found documents the reader must deduce that kind of information from whatever writing is left behind. 

What exactly is the solution that Stephen Albert has discovered to the mystery concerning the project of the narrator’s ancestor?

Albert discovered that the narrator’s ancestor wrote a labyrinth through time. The project of the ancestor makes no sense when viewed from a typical thought process of linear progression of time, leading to many people thinking he was crazy. However, as soon as the solution is said out loud it becomes incredibly obvious that the book, and the labyrinth, were not created to be viewed as one line of time moving through a physical space, but rather a narrator in a space moving through different paths of time. The book is an infinite labyrinth, able to grow and branch off into billions and millions of timelines.

What precisely is the analogy that connects a labyrinth in space with a labyrinth in time? What kind of questions does Borges raise in the story about the nature of Time.

The analogy is the idea that much like a labyrinth you walk through, in time every choice and turn leads you down a new route. While some choices would bring you to the same place, others will lead you to unknown ends. And after every choice more appear, creating a larger and larger web of possibilities as you progress. This raises the question of what happens if we make different choices?  Where would they lead? How many possibilities are really out there?

How does the story relate to hypertext? 

  This story is seen as an example of hypertext before hypertext could be invented. Much like the idea of the labyrinth, the story is full of these links that lead to other stories and facts, forcing the reader to choose at every intersection if they want to follow these ‘links’. In a normal story the reader is pulled along the one line of time, and are not given choices to make about how they want to follow the story, however, including these ‘links’ to outside information creates new paths for the reader to follow, creating a bigger and bigger labyrinth of choices the reader creates for themselves as they read the story.

List all the “authors” in the story, their relationship to each other, and how each contributes to the narrative. Describe how Borges blurs the traditional distinction between author, narrator, and characters.

The author of this story is Yu Tsun, the former professor of English at Tsingtao Hochschule and apparently a spy for the German government. He seems to be both the main character, the narrator, as well as the dictator. The line is blurred because although you know a Dr. Yu Tsun dictated this at the beginning of the story, it is not until the very end that you realize the main character truly was him. The two sides of this character, the professor and the spy, are kept so separate in the story that it seems as if they are two different people, the narrator and the character.  

What other questions does the text of the story prompt you to ask?

The story prompts you to think about the choices you are making in your life and the different paths being created all the time as you approach your life and make decisions. It makes you consider the possibility of worlds where things have gone differently, maybe from the beginning of time. However, it makes me wonder if finding those worlds would be a bad thing. What choices would people make when they knew there was a world where they chose differently? How would people act if they could access those worlds? Would people try on decisions like they try on clothes? How would society change?