Point of View

In "A Guide to Berlin" Nabokov presents several short vignettes about ordinary life in Berlin in December, 1925, from the vantage point of an unnamed narrator who describes these scenes to a drinking companion later in the day. The point of view of the story is that of the narrator's first-person subjective "I." In "The Pub" section, Nabokov introduces the voice of the listener—the story's second point of view (and its only use of spoken speech)—who complains that the "guide" he has just heard is dull and pointless. At the end of the story, the narrator sees himself as the barkeep's child views him by glimpsing his own reflection in the mirror that hangs on the wall behind the child. The story's third point of view is that of the silent child, whose field of vision and consciousness the narrator imagines as he...