The Reader by Bernard Schlink

The Reader by Bernard Schlink – himself a law professor and judge

The moral dilemma

This is a story with a great moral dilemma at its heart – do you own up to knowing someone  when you know that will raise many awkward questions.  Should Michael have intervened in the trial as he could easily have done? Easily but also risking his reputation etc. It is also a mataphor for the German past and present – if Hanna is the past then Michael is the present – confronting the past but while being ashamed of it. All the judges and their assesors are the past. Is Hanna the scapegoat?

The consequences of randomness

While this is only a novel – it could be a true story such is the infinite variety of life but I was struck by the randomness of events and how in Lorenz’s postulation of the effect of the flap of a butterfly’s wings events unfold which can be traced back to single seemingly unconnected incidents.

So in The Reader

Michael – a middle class boy vomits in the street

Which just happens to be where an illiterate former member of the SAS lives who just happens to pass by at that moment.

During the war – Hanna is a guard like hundreds of thousands of others – she is detailed to march women prisoners from a camp to somewhere else and in some small town the women are locked into a church for the night BUT

A random hit by an enemy bomb (perhaps a British bomb) sets the church on fire – the Allies did not ever deliberately bomb churches.

Two women happen to find somewhere to escape the fire.

One woman writes a book of this – many many books have been written.

Michael happens to study law in another town (Heidelberg) – what chance that he would go to the trial of the one person with whom he has ever fallen in love?

And it all stems from the fact that Hanna was illiterate – we never quite know why except that it signifies that she most probably had a most deprived childhood.

The love story

Michael Berg feels guilt, shame and horror at what he finds out about Hanna yet at the same time his teenage relationship with her is part of his growing up and though he kept it secret from his parents and friends he was proud to be with her. They fell in love and falling in love is not determined by class or age appropriateness. There is little in the book about Hanna’s responsibility towards him. She was in her 30s when she first seduced him – or did she – he was an extremely willing participant – yet shouldn’t she have known better –  she always refers to him as Kid. Can /should we forgive her in her lonliness?

Hanna’s illiteracy

Her illiteracy is her greatest handicap but she is not a stupid woman and is able to understand the often complex writings Michael reads to her. Of course it is her great undoing and we never really know how responsible she was for the burning of the church and the women inside for she admits probably a far greater role than perhaps she actually took  - anything rather than admit she cannot write even her name.

A further twist is that it was her job to choose who should go to the gas chambers and she chose the weakest but asked them to read to her before they left - why? It is this Michael uses as his excuse for not revealing her secret.

The witness

At the trial two of the witnesses (mother and daughter) are survivors of the fire – the daughter now (1995) lives in New York in quite palatial splendour –  (contrast with Hanna’s impoverished flat). In part three of the book Michael goes to visit the daughter and tries to give her the money Hanna has asked to be given to her.   He tells her his story.

When Michael suggests an organisation for illiteracy the woman remarks

‘Illiteracy ….is hardly a Jewish problem’ yet he finally gives it to The Jewish League Against Illiteracy’.

Michael and the prison

When Hannah is in prison Michael can again read to her without embarrassing himself – it is a form of atonement for not intervening – but was it enough and is her ending inevitable? He also visits her only once on the eve of her release but after an initial smile cannot reconnect.

The law

The law lecturer is more important in the film than in the book and the discussions in the lecture hall clearly explain that the law is the law and that Michael cannot interfere in the process. Another student draws our attention to the randomness of this trial – how it is the presence of the book which has brought it about. That there were hundreds of camps and thousands of guards and that indeed all the older generation are as guilty. This is emphasised - though not in words – by the panel of middle aged men in the court. We all know that lawyers defend the often indefensible and that justice is not always done.

I have skipped over the beginning of the book – the descriptions of the townscape and the importance of the buildings and the cityscape, his school, family and friends – they all go to make up Michael’s life while Hanna’s is unknown.

Finally 

Is this a book really about Michael and the consequences of one teenage mistake?

You could write another book about this book and the film. I shan’t.

The acting in the film is outstanding – it was a wonderful piece of directing by the late Antonio Minghella.