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The story’s protagonist, Yu Tsun has a contradictory nature. In his life as a spy, Yu Tsun is bold and decisive. He takes drastic action and is more concerned with his mission to pass information on British military movements to Germany than with his own survival. When he discovers Madden knows his identity, he does not try to save himself and instead works feverishly to find a way to pass his secret to the Chief before he is killed or arrested to be hanged. However, despite his appearance of selfless loyalty to the German cause, Yu Tsun despises his German chief and the country itself, calling it “barbarous” and referring to his role in becoming a spy as being “degraded.” Although he is working for the destruction of the British military, he does not hate the British people, citing as an example Stephen Albert, whom he compares to the great poet and philosopher Goethe. In that comparison, Borges shows that Yu Tsun also admires some Germans, despite his professed disdain for the country, a further indication of his contradictory nature. 

As a spy, Yu Tsun takes quick actions motivated by cold rationality, but his internal life is more emotional and contemplative. While he acts bravely, he refers to his sense of vulnerability and describes himself repeatedly as “timorous,” suggesting that his internal perception of himself is contrary to the self he presents to the outside world. He is aware of the split within him, contrasting the lethal end his actions are driving him toward with his childhood spent in perfect and orderly gardens. Despite his cold-blooded purpose in visiting Albert, during the hour he spends there before Madden arrives, he falls easily into a joyful and awe-filled contemplation of his great-grandfather’s work and theories of time. Although he knows he has come to murder Albert, Yu Tsun reveres his wisdom and is genuine in his repeated assertions that he is Albert’s friend. Yu Tsun’s quiet and intellectual internal life stands in marked contrast to his bold and calculating outer life as a spy.

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