The Garden of Forking Paths

How does the author use foreshadowing in The Garden of Forking Paths?

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Order and disorder foreshadow each other. In addition to the consideration of time in "The Garden of Forking Paths," Borges also seems to be exploring the concepts of order and disorder. Indeed, Thomas P. Weissert argues that the subject of the story is "chaos and order." Within the short story there exists a novel by Yu Tsun's ancestor.

The novel is described variously as "incoherent," "chaotic," "an indeterminate heap of contradictory drafts," and "confused." In short, the novel appears to represent the very essence of disorder. However, Albert believes that he has solved the mystery of the lost labyrinth and the chaotic novel.

He argues that if one assumes that the novel itself is the labyrinth, and is the author's attempt to represent the webbing nature of time, the novel is not an example of chaos, but of order. Furthermore, Albert works to create order out of the disorder of the novel. He says, "I have compared hundreds of manuscripts, I have corrected the errors that the negligence of the copyists has introduced, I have guessed the plan of this chaos, I have re-established . . . the primordial organization."