Point of View

The perspective of the book is that of the author, Vladimir Nabokov who functions as the narrator of the story. The novel is written in the third person point of view, which allows the narrator to provide all of the necessary details and background information to the reader. Since the novel basically represents the memoirs of Van, it could have been written in the first person point of view, but this would have confined the knowledge of the reader to events that occurred in the presence of Van. The reader would not have knowledge of events that occurred elsewhere until Van knew about them. This would have severely limited the scope of the novel and the knowledge of the reader. The use of the third person point of view avoids this problem. Even though most of the scenes involve Van or Ada, there are scenes involving...