Point of View

The Wall Jumper by Peter Schneider is told primarily in the first person, in a mixture of present and past tenses, by a professional writer who keeps his identity closely secret. He lives in West Berlin and has found that his stories are not working out as well as he had hoped. He is intrigued by people divided symbolically and physically by the Wall and only a few decades of differing experiences under communism and democracy/capitalism. He seeks out stories of people who jump the Wall and is surprised to find that the traffic is two-way.

Several of the stories are told to the Narrator by friends and, as such, are recounted in the third person. Robert is a former East Berliner who has moved, uncomfortably, to the West. Robert relates the tragic/comic stories of Kabe, a bored veteran of 15 jumps, and of Walter...