Moran is a teacher of English and American literature. In this essay, Moran examines Nabokov's use of ambiguity and how he draws upon the reader's understanding of Othello.

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 mocks him), this easily forgotten character raises the issue of betrayal in the story's first paragraph. The different types of betrayal dramatized in the story are dizzying: the narrator may have been betrayed by his wife; the narrator may have betrayed his wife by leaving her to the Nazis in France; the Germans betray humanity; and V. betrays the narrator by giving...