1. Discuss the ways Borges uses the labyrinth as the central idea and image of The Garden of Forking Paths.

2. Discuss the implications of Borges' narrative technique in the story. Who is the narrator? In what guise does he present himself? How does Borges blur the traditional distinctions between author, narrator, and character in the story?

3. Discuss analogies between characters and between events in the story.

4. What kinds of questions does Borges raise in the story about the nature of time?

5. What relationship between reality and fiction is suggested in The Garden of Forking Paths? What conclusions might we draw about the writing of history?

6. What clues are given at the beginning of the story, and how are we misled by them?

7. How does Borges base his story in observable documentary facts in order to lend solidity to the idea of alternate worlds?

8. Stephen Albert's elucidation of the novelistic method he discerns in Ts'ui Pen's "garden of forking paths" is more than a witty postmodern conceit. Over the past few years, hypertext fiction has put exactly such a forking at the fingertips of computer-using readers who can thus write their own stories, mutating endings constantly.

Why are the tales of The Thousand and One Nights mentioned here?

What perceptions concerning the nature of reality may make authors not wish to exercise too much "authority" over creations?