Question

Read the excerpt below and answer the question.

I could think of nothing other than a cyclic volume, a circular one. A book whose last page was identical with the first, a book which had the possibility of continuing indefinitely. I remembered too that night which is at the middle of the Thousand and One Nights when Scheherazade (through a magical oversight of the copyist) begins to relate word for word the story of the Thousand and One Nights, establishing the risk of coming once again to the night when she must repeat it, and thus on to infinity.

What central theme is expressed by this excerpt from Borges’s “The Garden of Forking Paths”? Select all that apply.

non-linear time
infinite storytelling
the price of wisdom
the inescapability of fate

Answer 1

Infinite storytelling is the the main central theme.

Answer 2

The answers are: non-linear time and infinite storytelling.

Borges, the Argentinian writers explored in great detail the intricacies of storytelling, mostly through short stories, most notably in The garden of forking paths. Like the excerpt shows, the narrator explores the possibility of a form of time that is not linear, running from past to future, but rather a form of time that is cyclical, like many philosophers would have it (like Nietzsche): If time is cyclical, storytelling can be the best device to explore this form of time that could be related over and over again, always the same, but with each repetition adding layers of depth to this form of time that could, in principle, absorb infinite possibilities and all story lines.