Borges 7/16/13

In “The Garden of Forking Paths” by Jorge Luis Borges, the reader is exposed to the concept of alternative time lines. The way that this is presented begins in a very subtle way, as the beginning of the story implies that it is a simple crime story. Although the crime elements continue throughout the work, the main character begins to give back story that expands it into the representation of alternative time lines as he meets Albert, a man who admired his ancestor, Ts'ui Pen, who was “governor of his native providence, learned in astronomy, in astrology and in the tireless interpretation of all the canonical books, chess player, famous poet and calligrapher” (Borges 1341). This very learned man had created a book where the events changed from chapter to chapter, creating a type of labyrinth of time in which alternate time lines are certainly possible.

Zhang Ailing, in her “Sealed Off,” possibly took this even further. Rather than presenting the time lines and the labyrinth directly, she implies it several times throughout the story. Her story depicts a girl on a tramcar during a war. The tramcar must be stopped as the city is sealed off during an air raid. The world of the characters on the tramcar is vastly different when the car is stopped, and the reader is introduced to a possible alternate reality in which the situations of the stopped car are the actual reality of the characters. A romantic possibility arises between two characters and begins to evolve, yet when the car begins again at the end of the story, the two characters simply resume their lives, almost as if the situation was a dream. Although it isn't clear whether Ailing was actually attempting to write alternate time lines in this work, the way in which the characters attitudes change relative to the motion of the tramcar certainly lends itself well to this type of interpretation. For example, when the tram stops, a beggar begins to sing “Sad, sad, sad! No money do I have!” and the driver joins in with the song (Ailing 1347). When the tram starts up again at the end of the story and the beggar sings yet again, the driver responds with “You swine!” rather than joining in with the song (Ailing 1354). These vast differences in character are a clear shift between the stop and start of the tramcar and highlight this change in perception.

Works Cited

Ailing, Zhang. "Sealed Off." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 1337-44. Print.

Borges, Jorge Luis. "The Garden of Forking Paths." The Norton Anthology of World Literature. Ed. Martin Puchner. Shorter 3rd ed. Vol. 2. New York: Norton, 2013. 1337-44. Print.