The Garden of Forking Paths Betrayal Quotes Page 1
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| Quote #1 An Irishman in the service of England, a man suspected of equivocal feelings if not of actual treachery, how could he fail to welcome and seize upon this extraordinary piece of luck: the discovery, capture and perhaps the deaths of two agents of Imperial Germany? (2) |
In the world of espionage, everyone's loyalties are suspect. In the middle of one of the most impassioned periods of Irish nationalism, Madden's capturing a German spy helps prove his loyalty to England.
| Quote #2 I did not do it for Germany – no! Such a barbarous country is of no importance to me, particularly since it had degraded me by making me become a spy. (8) |
Yu Tsun finds himself in the unenviable position of working at a job he finds degrading for a country that he despises. It seems as though working as a spy makes him guilty of betraying... himself.
| Quote #3 Furthermore, I knew an Englishman – a modest man – who, for me, is as great as Goethe. I did not speak with him for more than an hour, but during that time, he was Goethe. (8) |
The man Yu Tsun most admires (Stephen Albert) is English, and yet it's the English that he is spying against. Is this a betrayal, or merely an indication that true bonds of loyalty don't line up with national boundaries?
