Content Warning: This section of the guide contains references to sexual violence, antisemitism, genocide, and suicide.

The unnamed narrator is the eldest of three children. He enjoys a comfortable if more modest lifestyle than the Finzi-Continis’. Consistently throughout the novel, he presents himself as an intellectual. Starting the events of the plot as a stressed-out schoolboy, his academic life is his largest motivator outside of his romantic interests. It is such a point of stress on his identity that he clashes against those whom he feels are not up to his standards, invoking the theme of Taste Versus Class. He is uncomfortable with Micòl’s depiction of Lattes and him as “‘[t]he two literary men of the band,’ two ‘very smart’ characters” (62), and as a boy, he rejects the comforts of a classmate because he does not see him as his equal. It is his academic pursuit without a clear goal that characterizes him as competitive instead of rational. 

While he is not pursuing a career as a professor or even motivated by a concern for money, he enjoys the lifestyle of the Finzi-Contini children. He envies their aristocratic lifestyle, and as the novel progresses, his closeness with the patriarch leads the narrator to call him “the professor” rather than any other name.