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20091117-930 "The Garden of Forking Paths" (Group 2)

Page history last edited by Krysta Klein 14 years, 4 months ago

Summary:

     Today we finished the discussion of Hedda Gabler and debated whether she should be seen as a coward, villain, or hero.  Ultimately, the most interesting evidence is for the hero because she takes action and control in her life through suicide.  In Hedda's standards, she has done a beautiful thing and can be seen as a social activist for women's rights.  Hedda and Lovborg exhibit metis as the only creative characters. Hedda is pregnant, therefore creating life and a future, while Lovborg writes about the future in his manuscript that Hedda also destroys (villaionous). Hedda is possibly a villain since she doesn't serve men, likes to control others, and leads to the downfall of Lovborg.

     In "The Garden of Forking Paths" by Jorge Luis Borges, a detective story unfolds with the main character Yu Tsun as a spy, suspense, clues, and a big reveal.  Yu Tsun is a professor working for Germans in WWI.  His friend gets captured and he decides to kill a man named Stephen Albert (the name of the town) to get his message across.  However, Yu Tsun's ancestor wrote a book that was considered a disaster and Yu Tsun ironically discovers that Stephen Albert is a Chinese Literature scholar and has figured out the meaning behind it.  The book is about all the possible outcomes of a situation happening simultaneously creating a labyrinth or maze that is infinite.  He teaches Yu Tsun the three ways to make a book seem infinite.  Afterword the story begins to start to tell itself, paralleling one of the techniques.  Albert begins telling his own story and Yu Tsun starts to feel all of his choices swarming around him.  He realizes he does not need to kill Albert, but is interrupted by Captain Madden and quickly chooses to kill Albert anyway.

 

Word Count: 299

 

 


Passages:

>p.1023 ["I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths.  Almost instantly, I understood: 'The garden of forking paths' was the chaotic novel; the phrase 'the various futures (not to all)' suggested to me the forking in time, not in space...In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts'ui Pen, he chooses- simultaneously- all of them.  He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork."]

 

In this passage we learn about the labyrinth and book of Ts'ui Pen.  Albert has figured out the literary riddle that they are one in the same and that both are infinite.  Prior to possessing the actual text, he thought up 3 methods to write an infinite work.  The first is a circular novel that has the same first and last page.  The second is the idea behind 1001 Nights in which at some point in the story it begins to tell itself over and over again cyclically.  The last is the heredity work in which fathers pass a work on to sons who add to the work and pass it down again.  The method in this passage considers every possible outcome of a situation as a way of creating an infinite amount of story plots.  This array of options is described as removing the 'opportunity cost' of a situation.

 

>p.1023 ["Naturally, there are several possible outcomes: Fang can kill the intruder, the intruder can kill Fang, they both can escape, they both can die, and so forth.  In the work of Ts'ui Pen, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings.  sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible pasts you are my enemy, in another my friend."]

 

Here we see how the story tells itself cyclically.  The foreshadowing of Albert's murder shows up repetitively in the story and acts as a way to reinforce the idea of multiple outcomes while still moving the plot forward.  Borges perpetuates Ts'ui Pen's infinite story by incorporating the multiple outcomes of Albert and Yu Tsun into the story.

 

>p.1025 ["Madden broke in, arrested me.  I have been condemned to the gallows.  I have won out abominably; I have communicated to Berlin the secret name of the city they must attack.  They bombed it yesterday; I read it in the same papers that offered to England that mystery of the learned Sinologist Stephen Albert who was murdered by a stranger, one Yu Tsun.  The Chief had deciphered this mystery.  He knew my problem was to indicate the city called Albert, and that I had found no other means to do so than to kill a man of that name."]

 

The last paragraph of the story serves to be a big reveal of the underlying problem in the plot.  The reveal along with the stock spy character, a chase, and a list of clues (at the beginning) makes this a detective story.  Borges is known for these kinds of mystery/detective stories with unusual twists on the old classic form.  The passage explains a motive for all of the seemingly random events that occur.  The reader is meant to pick up on these strange nuances during the reading and put the pieces together once the gaps are revealed.


Key Terms:

 

>Sinologist:  someone who studies Chinese.  Albert is a synologist and it's evident in the text that he knows a lot about Chinese culture in the way he talks and gets along with Yu Tsun.

 

>Inviolate: ideally how a hero's character should be; without violating any rules or morals and achieving justice

 

>1001 Nights: a work of literature in which a woman tells the actual story of 1001 Nights to save her life from a prince; a repeating story that tells itself again and again

Comments (4)

Gabrielle Conlon said

at 3:23 pm on Nov 18, 2009

I had to run to class so I just saved where I was..i'll edit and add the word count in a little

Krysta Klein said

at 1:20 am on Nov 19, 2009

Hey guys, I added the 3 passages so if anyone could edit the commentaries under them that would be great, the second one is severely lacking. Also, are there any more/better key terms? couldn't think of any. I added/edited to your summary too Gabrielle- i think it reads better organizationally

Gabrielle Conlon said

at 12:02 pm on Nov 19, 2009

Krysta, I kept trying to edit last night but it said you had the key..it looks good though, thanks.

Brian Croxall said

at 2:40 pm on Nov 24, 2009

Your notes for last Tuesday's class are good, and that is admirable for a few reasons. First, I didn't make it easy on you since I spent more than half of our class time wrapping up Hedda Gabler. On the whole, you handled that with aplomb. Second, it appears that only two people made any contribution ot these notes. Valerie was out with the flu, so she wasn't in much of a position to contribute, but I'm disappointed in the others who didn't get involved.

If I were to make any additions to your summary's first paragraph (which would be hard since I'd only have one word to work with), I would want you to explain a bit more how Hedda's suicide is heroic in that it is a rebellion against what society wants or dictates. The paragraph on Borges is edging toward plot summary. That's a fair description of what we did with the story as we began looking at it, but you could have spent a little more time on things like the detective story or how Yu Tsun has already made his choice and can therefore ignore the swarming rather than the summary. It's also worth noting that while Albert thinks of three ways a book could be infinite that Ts'ui Pen comes up with a fourth.

You chose good passages and wrote good explanations of why they are important, and your definitions are also well chosen. A small point: 1001 Nights doesn't repeat itself over and over again; rather one night in the text, the story doubles back on itself.

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