chunk: The third narrator is Pechorin himself. However, unlike the other two, he is not actually a character immediately in the story. Instead, he narrates through his diaries, which were published along with the unnamed narrator's travel notes after Pechorin's death. The diaries, however, seem to switch at least once from the past tense (as a diary would be written) to the present tense. Pechorin, the "hero of our time" is shown to be alternately impulsive and calculating through Maxim Maximych's stories. He is shown to be calculating, manipulative, emotionally unavailable and arrogant through his own recollections. However he is both sensitive and cynical as well as intelligent, a fact he is all too aware of.