Weir replaces the voice of Tieck's narrator with that of the bird. The text consists of a series of nested narratives. The bird tells the story of Eckbert and Berthe to the dog. And in that story, Bertha narrates events in her past and Eckbert reads her letter. The New York Times critic Bernard Holland describes the plot as "inscrutable" and "full of effects but bereft of causes". In looking for an explanation, he suggests that the figure of Walther in his various forms is a representation of memory and his murder as a sign of how what is remembered is intolerable.Holland (1994), p.1. However, having put this explanation forward, Holland then goes on to say of the text "Perhaps it is interpretation-proof. This overeagerness to impose sense on nonsense ends up compromising a story meant more to be beheld than understood."
