SOURCE: Pickar, Gertrud Bauer. “Narrative Perspective in the Novels of Martin Walser.” German Quarterly 44, no. 1 (January 1971): 48-57.

In the following essay, Pickar studies various literary devices related to the narrative perspective in Die Ehen in Philippsburg, Halbzeit, and Das Einhorn, evaluating the effects of each device's development upon the forms and themes of the novels.

Walser's first novel, Ehen in Philippsburg, is often dismissed as the work of a novice and generally passed over in discussions of his other novels, Halbzeit and Das Einhorn.¹ The reason for its exclusion is the apparent lack of similarity of this initial novel to his later works: it is narrated continually in the third person singular; there is no interplay of fictional levels which in subsequent novels is related to the use of the first person; the portrayal of character and plot lacks the complexity and ambiguity of the later works. Closer...