Unit 9

If I had an opportunity to change The Garden of Forking Paths, the only change I would do is main character. Although having Yu Tsun did contribute to the effectiveness of the story, I believe that the time period was not appropriate to use Yu for the story. The only reason I say this is because Asians were not involved in the World War One for the European side. Now if the story was based off of World War Two, then it would make more sense that Yu is working for the Germans to destroy the Allies. Even in this case, it would still make no sense because it is said that Dr. Albert was listening to Chinese music. The only reason this is important is because Dr. Albert was currently studying Yu’s ancestor, Ts’ui Pen. We can conclude that Yu must be Chinese and historically, the Chinese helping the Germans in World War Two would still not make sense because the Chinese were being attacked by the Japanese, an ally of Germany. It would make more sense to change the main character to a different race only for the purpose of making this short fictional story more realistically possible. To keep the overall structure of the story, Yu should be considered Japanese in order to comply with the historical features of the story.