Point of View

Here in Berlin alternates between first- and third-person point of view as the Visitor meets with various citizens of Berlin and listens to their personal stories, most of which involve the events of World War II and its aftermath. Brief sections told from the Visitor's point-of-view are presented in third person limited narration. In these sections, which consist of the prologue, the epilogue, and the introductions of each part of the novel, the narrator outlines the Visitor's motivations and her feelings about her past and her present. In the introduction to Part II, the Visitor has a conversation with her friend A. that elucidates her motivation for listening to the stories of the Berliners when she notes that “Everything that obsessed her...was autobiographical in the extreme” (59). She believes that by telling the stories of others, she will also be telling her own, and that...