The Garden of Forking Paths Study Guide

The story takes the form of a signed statement by a Chinese professor of English named Doctor Yu Tsun who is living in the United Kingdom during World War I. Tsun is a spy for the German Empire who has realized that an MI5 agent called Captain Richard Madden is pursuing him, has entered the apartment of his handler Viktor Runeberg, and either captured or killed him. Doctor Tsun is certain that his own arrest is next. He has just discovered the location of a new British artillery park and wishes to convey that knowledge to his German handlers before he is captured. He at last hits upon a desperate plan in order to achieve this.

Doctor Tsun explains that his spying has never been for the sake of Imperial Germany, which he considers "a barbarous country". Rather, he says, he did it because he wanted to prove to his racist masters that an Asian is intelligent enough to obtain the information needed to save their soldiers' lives. Tsun suspects that Captain Madden, an Irishman in the employ of the British Empire, might be similarly motivated.

Taking his few possessions, Tsun boards a train to the village of Ashgrove. Narrowly avoiding the pursuing Captain Madden at the train station, he goes to the house of Doctor Stephen Albert, an eminent Sinologist. As he walks up the road to Doctor Albert's house, Tsun reflects on his great ancestor, Ts'ui Pên, a learnèd and famous man who renounced his job as governor of Yunnan in order to undertake two tasks: to write a vast and intricate novel, and to construct an equally vast and intricate labyrinth, one "in which all men would lose their way". Ts'ui Pên was murdered before completing his novel,however, and what he did write was a "contradictory jumble of irresolute drafts" that made no sense to subsequent readers; nor was the labyrinth ever found.

Doctor Tsun arrives at the house of Doctor Albert, who is deeply excited to have met a descendant of Ts'ui Pên. Doctor Albert reveals that he has himself been engaged in a longtime study of Ts'ui Pên's novel. Albert explains excitedly that at one stroke he has solved both mysteries—the chaotic and jumbled nature of Ts'ui Pên's unfinished book and the mystery of his lost labyrinth. Albert's solution is that they are one and the same: the book is the labyrinth.

Basing his work on the strange legend that Ts'ui Pên had intended to construct an infinite labyrinth, as well as a cryptic letter from Ts'ui Pên himself stating, "I leave to several futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths", Doctor Albert realized that the "garden of forking paths" was the novel, and that the forking took place in time, not in space. As compared to most fictions, where the character chooses one alternative at each decision point and thereby eliminates all the others, Ts'ui Pên's novel attempted to describe a world where all possible outcomes of an event occur simultaneously, each one itself leading to further proliferations of possibilities. Albert further explains that these constantly diverging paths do sometimes converge again, though as the result of a different chain of causes; for example, he says, in one possible time-line Doctor Tsun has come to his house as an enemy, in another as a friend.

Though trembling with gratitude at Albert's revelation and in awe of his ancestor's literary genius, Tsun glances up the path to see Captain Madden approaching the house. He asks Albert to see Ts'ui Pên's letter again. As Albert turns to retrieve it, Tsun draws a revolver, and declares his friendship before murdering him in cold blood.

Doctor Tsun is arrested, convicted of murder, and sentenced to death by hanging. However, he has "most abhorrently triumphed", as he has revealed to Berlin the location of the artillery park. Indeed, the park is bombed as Tsun goes on trial. The location of the artillery park was in Albert. Doctor Tsun had realized that the only way to convey that information was to murder a person of that name, so that the news of the murder would appear in British newspapers connected with his name.