The Labyrinth Of Life In "The Garden Of Forking Paths"

A labyrinth is classically a human construction designed to confuse. It can trap our lives, hiding our past and future and constantly forcing us to make choices, even though we may not know what the consequences of those choices might be. The confusion of the puzzle may even tempt us to run blindly through the labyrinth, ending in disaster. Life itself is often considered such a labyrinth, and by adopting the strategies of travelers who came before and choosing our path cautiously while playing close attention to the patterns of our lives, we may find the right path through the maze. Although the Labyrinth appears to be an intellectual challenge, every turn is accompanied by an ethical dilemma as well. "The Garden of Forking Paths" is both an ethical and intellectual riddle. Consideration of Yu Tsun's intellectual choices must be accompanied by consideration of his ethical choices.

The most terrifying aspect of the garden of forking paths is that the ending of the maze is never in sight. Often, we are aware of only the obvious consequences of taking any particular turn, while the obscure consequences are rarely anticipated. As a result, we can not be sure where the next turn will bring us until we have made the choice. An action of tremendous personal significance, such as Stephen Albert's murder, may have no greater consequences than a winning a battle in a war that the German's could possibly end up losing. Ts'ui Pкn himself was murdered by a stranger before he had a chance to explain the nature of his labyrinth, while the current war was started by another homicidal stranger. The choices made by these men within their labyrinths have brought Yu Tsun to Stephen Albert's home, to become the stranger who will kill Albert. The action of the story seems inevitable, yet such inevitability is a deception. The path we have chosen may appear to be the only path that can be taken, but in reality, the possibilities are far more complex, as Albert explains that Ts'ui Pкn "did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent, and parallel times . . .[where] time forks perpetually toward innumerable futures"(579).

If we could see consequences of each decision we made before forced to make the decision, taking a particular path in the labyrinth would be much less difficult. Unfortunately, we can not see the future, and many of us lack a clear perception of what happened before to lead us to the crossroad. Similarly to Yu Tsun on his fatal journey, we are constantly confronted with choices, but we are dimly aware of the presence of most of these choices, and even less aware of the full consequences. Once Albert turned his back, Yu Tsun "readied the revolver"(579) and "fired with extreme caution" (579). Yu Tsun did not consider any ethical consequences of his actions; he just killed a man who spent his entire life unraveling the history of Yu Tsun's ancestor. Even worse is the chance that the best intentions can still lead to disaster. Yu Tsun remembers that the key to "certain labyrinths" is "to turn always to the left" (575). Unfortunately, the labyrinth of life lacks such simple rules to guide us. In fact, keeping a path which is too constant may result in walking in circles. Therefore, whether the labyrinth is a maze of our own construction or a trap we have found ourselves in, there is no easy way to escape any predicament.

Yu Tsun chose to "impose a future as irrevocable as the past" (575) when trying to choose his path, but it is the past that defines is, and provides us knowledge of how things could occur in the future. Not only is Yu Tsun ignoring his past, but by "[imposing] a future as irrevocable as the past" (575), he is completely bypassing any ethical decisions he has to make. By forcing himself to believe that he must kill Albert, he is denying the fact that it is unethical to kill a man, even more so a man who has aided Yu Tsun by understanding the true intention of his ancestor. Also, having a sure sense of the past can provide an easy means of guiding our future. In Yu Tsun's past, his family suffers from the shame of the apparent failure of Ts'ui Pкn's novel, but the novel was not a failure, and this misunderstanding of the past leads to a misinterpretation of the future. The shame towards his ancestor may even have resulted in his decision to become a German spy. In contrast, Stephen Albert, who knows the past well, seems aware of his death upcoming death as he tells Yu Tsun that "in another [time], while crossing the garden, you found me dead; in still another, I utter these same words, but I am a mistake, a ghost" (575) and "in one of them I am your enemy" (575). Albert, having deciphered the work of Ts'ui Pкn, has a firm grip on the past, and because he knows where the past has been, he can see where the future leads.

Further impairing Yu Tsun's awareness and consequences of all the existing paths is his distraction with the walls of the maze. All he seems to think about is both the Chief's opinion of his ancestors since he became a spy because "[he] sensed that the chief somehow feared people of [his] race - for the innumerable ancestors who merge within [him]" (574), and the current work at hand. Unfortunately for Yu Tsun, the world is much larger than his minute conception, and he has not considered the effect that his information might have on the war, much less how the war's outcome might affect the world. It is quite obvious that the great moral and ethical ramifications of his actions have not occurred to him at all as a result of his misconception of reality.

When Yu Tsun finds out that a fellow spy, Victor Runeburg, has been arrested, he decides to continue with his plan by killing Albert rather that surrendering or trying to escape from Madden and start a new life in a distant land. Despite being confronted with several less life threatening paths, Yu Tsun stubbornly follows his only apparent goal