David's Use Of Frame Narrative In City Of Thieves

City of Thieves starts off with a narrator named David. He starts the story explaining who he is and telling stories about his grandfather. David talks about his childhood as well, including details about living near his grandparents who owned an insurance company. He tells of how his grandparents sold the company and retired to Florida. David lived in Los Angeles and wrote screenplays. He was asked to write an autobiographical essay, on which he decided to write about Leningrad, the place his grandfather grew up. The frame story begins when David flies to Florida to keep record of his grandfather’s stories. At that time, the narrator changes to David’s grandfather, Lev. This novel is considered a frame narrative because it is a story set

Frame stories use embedded narratives to help tie in the context of the main narrative. Readers are lead from story to story when reading or watching frame stories. This also helps to provide different perspectives to the readers, by showing narratives from different points of view or people. When given multiple perspectives readers can learn much more about what is happening with certain characters feelings and thoughts. Having already explained what makes City of Thieves a frame narrative, I will also give a few examples of other stories and movies that are well known frame stories. The first example is Titanic, in the beginning of the movie an old woman named Rose is recalling her voyage of the Atlantic Ocean. Further into the narrative the viewer finds themselves in 1912, the beginning of the story. Throughout the rest of the narrative you hardly ever return to Rose. The movie then ends just as it begun. A popular book that uses frame narrative is The Odyssey by Homer. This very popular tale includes a few stories within the book itself. Early in the narrative, Zeus and Athena discuss Odysseus and what

If this story was told using just Lev’s narration then there would be no prior understanding or appreciation for how David viewed his grandfather before hearing the stories from the man himself. Without this information from David the story would simply be some biography about a random man with readers wondering how the author had a connection with him. On the other hand, there is no way that this story could have been made using narrative from just David’s point of view, because Lev was the only one talking the entire time David was recording on his mini cassettes. I feel that using frame narrative to write City of Thieves was the best way David could to keep readers engaged and