«The Reader» is a world-famous novel by the lawyer and writer Bernhard Schlink. It has been translated into a total of 35 languages and has long topped international bestseller lists. It was also made into a 2008 film by director Stephen Daldry with an all-star cast.
The book is about the story of the first-person narrator Michaelwho as a teenager entered the 21 years older Hanna amorous. The relationship ends abruptly, but as a law student, Michael sees Hanna again as a defendant in a trial. She will for her Complicity in National Socialism charged and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Bernhard Schlink deals with several complex topics in «The Reader», including how subsequent generations deal with the crimes of National Socialism and sexual abuse of minors.
Summary of «The Reader»
The novel «The Reader» has a framework story in which Michael Berg, who has now grown up, writes his story. The book is in three parts divided, each describing a phase of the narrator’s life.
- The first part takes place in 1958/59. Michael is fifteen and meets 36-year-old Hanna. He falls in love with the much older railway employee and they begin a relationship.
- In the second part, Michae, as a student, takes part in the trial in which Hanna is a defendant.
- In the third part, Hanna is in prison and Michael sends tapes there on which he reads books to her.
First part
The first part of the novel is about the love affair between the tram inspector Hanna and the teenager Michael. This relationship is described from the perspective of the adult Michael who remembers.
Getting to know Michael and Hanna
The novel begins with the memory of the money thieving illness that Michael suffered at the age of 15. When he vomits on the street, a woman helps him and escorts him home. The youth then lies in bed for a few weeks with jaundice. When he gets better, his mother sends him to his helper to say thank you. He goes to her apartment with a bouquet of flowers, where she is just about to iron her underwear.
When Michael wants to leave, the woman tells him to wait because she wants to accompany him a little longer. Through a half-open door, he sees her putting on stockings, which makes him sexually aroused. Noticing that she can see him staring at her, he runs away in shame.
Michael, who is still in poor health, dreams of the encounter. His fever dreams are becoming more and more sexual, which unsettles him. Because of the big age difference, he moral concerns and tries to suppress his desire at first. Soon after, however, he goes back to Hanna’s apartment and waits for her.
When Hanna comes home from work, Michael helps her get coal from the basement for heating. Because he’s dirty afterwards, she convinces him to take a bath, noticing his lust. She undresses and seduces the 15-year-old. The two sleep together.
The relationship between Hanna and Michael
Since then, Michael has been visiting Hanna every day. Hannah washing compulsion is the reason why they take a long shower together every day before they have sex. When Michael tells her that he’s skipping school to visit her because he thinks he’s failing because of his illness, she throws him out. Hanna says he shouldn’t come back until he’s finished studying for school.
Michael complies with the request. After some time he returns to Hanna and they start to talk about his school material when they meet. Hanna asks Michael to give her the to read bookswho treat them at school. Reading together becomes a ritual of every meeting. First, Michael reads Hanna from a book, then they shower together and have sex. After that, they stay together for a while.
Hanna keeps dodging Michael’s questions about her past. After Michael has visited her at her job on the S-Bahn, he breaks in Fight between the two out. For the sake of peace and because Michael is afraid of losing Hanna, he takes all the blame. The reconciliation takes place through sex. From this point on, any dispute between the two is settled by Michael humiliating himself and they then sleep together.
The bike ride
Hanna and Michael are planning one during the summer holidays multi-day bike tour, with Hanna leaving the preparation and all decisions to the young person. For example, she also wants him to choose the dishes when they go out to eat. To surprise her with a breakfast Michael sneaks out of the room one morning.
When he returns, he meets an angry and half-naked Hanna. He insists he gave her one written note have, but this one has disappeared. Hanna says she didn’t see him beats Michael in her anger and then collapses. Because she has shown weakness for the first time, what happened makes Michael feel even closer to her.
His parents are still away when they return from the bike tour, which is why he invites Hanna over in the evening and cooks for her. She is fascinated by the books of Michael’s father, who is a philosophy professor. Feeling like an intruder, Hanna refuses to spend the night at Michael’s childhood home and the couple go back to their apartment.
The end of the relationship
in the new school year Michael starts spending more time with classmates. He develops a closer relationship, especially with Sophie, who sits next to him at school. He starts getting himself to feel more guiltybecause he keeps his relationship with Hanna a secret.
The social focus of young people in summer is this outdoor pool. He spends most of his free time there. With Hanna there are more and more arguments. She seems irritated to Michael and he thinks she is burdened with something she doesn’t tell him about. One day at the outdoor pool, Michael sees Hanna and wants to go to her. But even as he thinks about an appropriate greeting, she’s already gone.
The next day he finds out that Hanna left town. She is said to have resigned from her job, although she was only offered further training as a train driver. Michael thinks that Hanna moved because of him and has a guilty consciencebecause he didn’t stand by her.
Second part
The second part of the novel takes place in 1966. Michael is studying law, without having a real passion for the subject. He has not processed the abrupt end of the relationship with Hanna and is therefore emotionally cold. In a seminar about the legal processing of National Socialist crimes Like his fellow students, he condemns their parents’ generation for their actions.
The court hearing
During the seminar, the students can attend the court process. Although the process in the novel is fictional, it is strongly reminiscent of the Auschwitz trials. Also among the accused is Hannawho sees Michael for the first time since he was a teenager.
the Auschwitz trials found 1967/68 in Frankfurt am Main. They were intended to serve the legal processing of the Holocaust (the Shoah), which largely took place in Poland occupied by Nazi Germany. Various people who held positions in Auschwitz or other concentration and extermination camps were indicted.
Hanna states in the process that she 1943 from her job at Siemens switched to the SS be. She then worked first in Auschwitz and later in a subcamp for women, where ammunition was manufactured. The forced laborers were regularly exchanged, and the weak or sick women were sent to Auschwitz to die. Hanna is still responsible for more crimes during the Death marches after the end of the war charged.
The Schutzstaffel (SS) was an organization that was founded in 1925 and functioned as an instrument of government under the dictatorship of the Nazi regime. It was initially intended to suppress the population and to maintain the power of the NSDAP party. From 1934, however, also fell Organization of the concentration and extermination camps in their area of responsibility – thus also the implementation of the Holocaust (the Shoah).
After Germany’s defeat in World War II, the concentration camps were evacuated by the Nazis. Most of the prisoners were forced to go west from Poland. The months of marches under the most adverse conditions are called death marches designated because most of the prisoners died of hunger, thirst, cold, exhaustion or after being shot by the guards.
On the death march, they should Guards, including Hanna, the women from the camp locked in a church to have. When the church was bombed, they did not open the doors, locking the inmates inside the burning building. Only one woman survived with her young daughter. The now adult daughter testifies as a witness in court.
The other accused women deny everything the witness says. When Hanna admits that the woman’s statements are true, the other former guards take the opportunity to use her as a portray the sole perpetrator. They also state that Hanna always had favorites in the camps who had to read to her in the evenings.
Hanna’s illiteracy
There is one Report from the guards, which documents the events described and which the defendants say that Hanna wrote it alone. She denies that, which is why the judge after a handwriting sample required. Hanna wants to avoid him and finally admits that she wrote the report alone.
As Michael reflects on what happened in court, he suddenly understands that Hanna must be illiterate. He also remembers the events of his youth, like that missing notes in the hotel room and that he keeps coming back to her had to read. He’s not sure if he should tell the judge about his finding since Hanna seems very ashamed of her handicap. However, it could reduce their sentence if the court found out about it. Michael asks his father, Hannas, for advice dignity and self-determinationemphasized and therefore says nothing.
Michaels fault walks itself. It no longer bothers him that Hanna denied as a youth, but one to have loved a criminal. He tries to better understand the time of the Nazi regime and therefore often drives to a nearby concentration camp memorial. Eventually, however, he returns to his method, his to numb feelingsby disconnecting from his emotions and becoming cold to those around him in order to continue participating in the process. At the end of the second part, Hanna becomes one life imprisonment sentenced.
third part
The third part covers the longest period 1966 to 1994/95, away. Michael stays emotionless. Even physically, a lack of sensitivity is evident, so that on a ski holiday he almost…