The Garden Of Forking Paths By Jorge Luis Borges

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Recommended: subjective reader response theory

Most times when a reader truly gets into a story they will imagine everything that is happening in their head. They will watch the story unfold in their mind's eye and some will stop to examine what they have read. Reader-response criticism is used when a reader decided to stop and try to explain what is going through their mind at certain intervals throughout a story. Jorge Luis Borges story, “The Garden of Forking Paths”, is a complex short story about a military man who travels on a mission that only he knows about. While reading this story many readers must stop and try to unravel the secrecy that is slowly revealed by the main character, Yu Tsun. Reader-response criticism is one literary element that can be used throughout this story and …show more content…

In the middle of the book, Tsun is searching and leaving the city to try and stay ahead of Madden. He reaches a town called “Ashgrove”, and soon after arriving enters into a labyrinth. Borges shows, “The instructions to turn always to the left reminded me that such was the common procedure for discovering the central point of certain labyrinth”(57). Here the characterization of Tsun can be narrowed down to the fact that he has has previous work with labyrinths. To have knowledge, no matter how basic, show he had, at one point in his life, an interest in labyrinths. The reader is now able to connect that he is indeed searching for something. On a last minute before he could be caught by Madden or be killed, he his searching for something. Borge continues with, “Something stirred in my memory and I uttered . . . 'The garden of my ancestor Ts' ui Pen”(58). Now the reader can make the connection with the mission having do to with his lineage. A peak at his history shows that this last trip was to find something that belonged to one of his ancestors. Readers at this point are wound up and trying to figure out what is so important about this thing his ancestor …show more content…

Yu Tsun is a mysterious character that readers are left with trying to figure out just who is is, what his role was in the end, and how he benefited from killing Albert. Madden is pictured as the hero of the story, following this wanted man, gearing towards capturing him and bringing him back to be tried. Madden does so, but only after witnessing Tsun killing Albert does he finally catch him and drag him to jail. With the plot picking up speed at the end everything happens quickly and readers are left

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