Guide Mentor

Character Role Analysis

All Adults

If forced, we could argue that nearly all of the adults act as guides or mentors to young Vladimir as he grows into the person who will one day write "Speak, Memory." He has a special bond with his mother, with whom he shares synesthesia, or, expanded more generally, a different way of seeing the world: she shows him that's okay. His father shows Vladimir that being a man means fighting for what you believe in, while Ordo, Lenski, and all of the other tutors teach and model different ways of being in the world.

Little Vladimir is an observant sponge, who thinks deeply about the different lives around him. But by the time he's at Cambridge, he's done with all that, an adult himself, and readying himself to be a guide himself, to his son, and his future students.