n the novel, "...As explorations of the ways in which public and private concern Intersect, they are politically engaged. The brooding specter of Nazism hovers in the background, finally to impinge even on characters as indifferent to politics as the landlady Fraulin Schroeder and the innocently naughty cabaret singer Sally Bowles..." (Summers 1). This statement proves to be true about all the characters, from the major to minor. Each one is effected in their own sort of way by this dramatic political change in the city of Berlin. The loosely connected sequence of diaries in the novel achieves unity, between the characters, as the result of the structural principles. " One involves the deliberate balancing of economic, sexual, social, cultural, and political polarities in its various sections and among its disparate characters. Beneath such oppositions as rich and poor, homosexual and heterosexual, Jew and Gentile, Communist and Nazi is a shared reality of the deadened spirit that unites everyone in the book, even as it makes real integration impossible" (Summers 1). The other source of unity is the continuing and developing presence of the narrator. "His inability to connect meaningfully with any of the polarized characters, despite his open sympathy for them all, mirrors the state of Berlin itself. His personal failure to achieve intimacy is symptomatic of the social disease that blights the city and that culminates in the spiritual death represented by Hitler's triumph" (Summers 2).
             As the political situation deteriorates, Isherwood's portraits darken. "There is an increasing sense of suffocation, a sinking of human consciousness, as people discover
             themselves locked in hopeless situations, tapped by the approaching horror of Nazism" (Piazza 3). But, contrary to the belief, not all of the characters experienced a dramatic change to this movement. Some were not grea...