In his opening paragraph to V., the narrator of “That in Aleppo Once…” explains that he learned V.’s address from a mutual acquaintance who “seemed to think somehow or other” that V.”was betraying our national literature.” While the opinions of “good old Gleb Alexandrovich Gekko” matter little to V. or the narrator (who even slightly…
That in Aleppo Once by Vladimir Nabokov: Setting
World War II and Occupied France On May 10, 1940, German forces attacked the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. By June 9, the Germans had crossed the Somme River and effectively destroyed any hopes of French retaliation. In an attempt to appease the Germans and end the destruction they caused, Henri Philippe Petain (an eighty-four-year-old Marshal…
That in Aleppo Once by Vladimir Nabokov: Literary Devices
Setting Nabokov presents the narrator’s struggles with his wife against the background of the German occupation of France during World War II. Thus, domestic horror is likened to national horror; the bureaucratic problems the narrator has with the “consuls and commissaires” in obtaining the necessary papers to leave France are likened to the marital problems…
That in Aleppo Once by Vladimir Nabokov: Themes
Communication and Miscommunication Nabokov’s France is a place where attempts at communication routinely break down. For example, when the narrator and his wife write to her uncle in New York, they receive no reply. After finding his wife (and the train) gone at Faugeres, the narrator engages in a “nightmare struggle with the telephone” trying…
That in Aleppo Once by Vladimir Nabokov: Characters
Gleb Alexandrovich Gekko An acquaintance of both the narrator and V. who has also emigrated to the United States, Gekko supplies the narrator with V.’s address. Holmes Holmes is the “plain-clothes man” from the Nice police who assists the narrator in the search for his wife. Unlike his namesake, the infallible detective Sherlock Holmes, he…
That in Aleppo Once by Vladimir Nabokov: Summary
Nabokov’s story is written in the form of a letter from an unnamed narrator to V., his Russian expatriate friend living as a novelist in the United States. The narrator begins by telling V. that he has arrived in America. While in New York City, he fortuitously met a mutual friend of theirs (Gleb Alexandrovich…
The Replacement by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Analysis
Prior to the twentieth century, writers structured their works to reflect their belief in the stability of character and the intelligibility of experience. Traditionally, novels and stories ended with a clear sense of closure as conflicts were resolved and characters gained knowledge about themselves and their world. Many writers during the twentieth century challenged these…
The Replacement by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Setting
The New Novel The term New Novel (nouveau romari) became associated with a group of French writers in the 1950s, most notably Nathalie Sarraute, Claude Simon, Robert Pinget, Marguerite Duras, Michel Butor, and Robbe-Grillet, who rejected literary traditions of plot, action, narrative, and characterization, and created a new novelistic form that presented an objective record…
The Replacement by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Literary Devices
Plot Robbe-Grillet constructs a nontraditional plot in “The Replacement.” He interweaves three fragments: the interaction between the teacher and the pupils in the classroom, the schoolboy peering intently at the tree, and the story that is being read aloud in the classroom. Robbe-Grillet continually moves among the three, which disrupts chronology and subverts readers’ understanding…
The Replacement by Alain Robbe-Grillet: Themes
Knowledge The main theme in “The Replacement” focuses on the attainment of knowledge. The story is about how people perceive the world and how they often become confused when they try to interpret it. Robbe-Grillet reveals this theme through the interweaving of three plot lines. The central story, that of the interaction between the teacher…