A Literary Analysis of The Reader By Bernhard Schlink - Research Paper Example

A Literary Analysis of The Reader By Bernhard Schlink Word Count: 2250 I. Introduction Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader is an engaging political World War II Nazi thriller that takes one on a journey through the lives of two people, Michael Berg and Hanna Schmitz. “The novel traces the sexual romantic relationship between a fifteen-year-old boy, Michael, and his middle- aged lover, Hanna, an ex-Nazi concentration camp guard. The novel’s themes are Michael’s coming of age and [realizing] Hannah’s past during her trial for war crimes…” in addition to the fact that Hannah cannot read.”1 Indeed, this story makes for a compelling narrative which captures the essence of World War II war crimes and epitomizes a love affair for all time, inextricably weaving a story that no reader would ever want to truly forget—whatever one’s opinion may be. II. Michael’s Coming of Age Michael is fascinated with Hanna, a hard-working older woman. “Schlink’s novel…deals with [a young German boy seeking] to come to terms with that war and [its] appalling atrocities…[Questions include] the extent to which…fiction [has perception difficulties with] national identity, and implicitly about how [much] a literary text can address issues as acutely as a sociological or historical work.”2 The appalling atrocities of World War II haunt Michael even as he is living in New York in the United States, years and years later, working as a lawyer. The book has several different vignettes in which one is taken back and forth within the story. Flashbacks of Michael Berg’s childhood are intermingled with the present, with Hanna sitting in a prison cell waiting for Michael’s letters and cassette tapes—in which he would read stories to her, much like Michael used to read Hanna adventures like The Odyssey and Anton Chekhov’s The Lady with the Dog. These encounters are what keep Michael coming back again and again to see Hanna—not only for sexual exploits, but also because he truly admires Hanna’s tough character and irreverent personality, which can sometimes be biting and cruel, being simultaneously loving. Michael, however, in his haste to love Hanna, does not realize the seriousness of the relationship into which he has entered. Years later, at a criminal trial for war crimes in Nazi Germany, Michael learns that his childhood lover was not merely just anyone—but possibly a criminal as well, which shall be denoted in the segment to follow. III. Hanna’s Notorious Past Hanna turns out not to be as innocent as she would suggest—even though we already know that Hanna is an utterly daring, witty, wise and capricious soul. Of course, there are some factual errors that must be cleared up, in analyzing The Reader. One of those factual errors is that actually, most women would not have been SS guards—in fact, none of them would be, except in the case of auxiliary SS guards. Auxiliary SS guards were assistants but not on par with actual SS guards. Also, the amount of these were relatively few in number. According to Patricia Heberer of the Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Women could not be members of the SS Proper….[They] were technically termed…[female SS attendants] and were…an auxiliary group of SS…a minority in the concentration camp world…[thusly] misrepresent[ing] the historical role of women in SS posts…”3 Another difficulty that we have in parsing Hanna’s notorious past is the fact that this novel focuses on is the suffering of Germans in terms of coming to grips with what the Nazis had done. While we know that Michael has severe moral hang-ups with the Nazi occupation, Hanna maintains at the trial that she was just doing her job—but she also maintains that she did not murder anyone, she was just following orders. And, indeed, even though she did not murder anyone—Schlink’s book still does a delicate balancing act between trying to drudge up empathy for the Germans without trying to sound too schmaltzy or offensive. “Crownshaw argues for a more nuanced reading of Bernhard Schlinks novel as a text that problematizes the moral binaries of perpetrator and victim in a useful and productive fashion…how [does one] best represent German suffering in a balanced manner…without relativizing [Jewish suffering] or sentimentalizing German victimhood.”4 So, yes—on the one hand, in making the readers of The Reader feel sorry for the Germans who were against the Nazis, one must also keep in mind that those same Germans had the power to do something about the injustices they saw happening in their communities. Thus, Germans who were sympathetic to the Nazi government cause although they were not directly involved, still implicates them on a moral level to the crimes committed by the Nazis. Hanna, however, is definitely a character whom we believe was just doing a job—being a guard. The prosecutor and the witnesses take advantage of this fact and accuse Hanna of having the order signed for the building to be burned, with Jewish men, women, and children inside. Hanna does not dismiss the charges, nor does she admit to them at first. Instead, however, she remains silent. At the trial, Michael feels torn. At one point, he even engages his law school colleagues in a debate about, if one knew something about a legal trial that could change of the course of the trial—should he say anything? He is convinced by his law school comrades not to say anything. Meanwhile, as Michael grows older and later forgets about Hanna, he still has flashbacks of them having fun and luxuriating in the German countryside—wondering what ever became of the woman he saw sentenced to life in prison for a crime she didn’t commit. Eventually, Michael’s conscious gets the better of him, and he realizes that if he doesn’t act now in order to release Hanna from jail, he will be forever haunted with the visage of her before him—the blood drained from her face as she stood in the courtroom and pleaded guilty to the charges that the prosecutor had entered against her, while the real criminals were let go free, having testified that it was her who signed the order to murder those people. Michael later realizes that his inaction cost Hanna many of the best years of her life, as he reflects as an adult being a lawyer who sends her books and cassette tapes and other materials to keep her engaged and active while she is in prison. Hanna, however, has her own plans, teaching herself how to read, keeping busy doing various projects, and so forth. She has more than enough to do, especially since teaching herself to learn how to read was a most industrious, but difficult, task. She realizes the value of reading and pores over the pages of books trying to identify letters, most notably using Chekhov’s The Lady and the Dog in order to compare the speech she recognizes on the cassette sent to her by Michael Berg—with the letters that are in the book that she has borrowed from the prison library. Much of the story of Hanna’s past is one that we realize is mixed with both sadness, frustration, and above all, love. Even though Hanna is a conflicted and tormented soul, there is an element of quiet and illustrious beauty in her derogation of Michael, despite the several times he comes out to see her and she reprimands him with her stern and, at times, haltingly harsh love. No doubt, Hanna is a character that few could hate, as we identify with her happy times and triumphs as well as her inadequacies and shortcomings as a woman and as a human being. It is her notorious past and inability to read, her fatal flaw—which she develops into a strength as she lives her life in prison—as we shall see next. IV. Hanna’s Illiteracy Hanna’s illiteracy is definitely a key touchstone of this book, and it soon becomes apparent that this is her fatal flaw. DiYanni states that “…[a] technique useful for writing critical papers is quoting key passages and commenting on their significance or validity.”5 One of the points the books makes clear from the beginning is that Hanna cannot read. She takes offense when Michael tries to push her on the subject. Michael says, “Talking about our fights only led to more fighting. Once or twice I wrote her letters. But she didn’t react, and when I asked her about them, she said, “Are you starting that again?”6 Obviously, Hanna is the person who is the dominant figure in the relationship. She says what is okay and what is not. She has a manner of being caustically sarcastic and mean, only to turn around and start to be loving and kind as though nothing wrong had ever happened. Michael is dumbfounded by Hanna’s moods, which can change in an instant. He is fascinated by Hanna because of her hard work ethic, her ability to be frank, and several other attributes for which he admires her—and which is why he lovingly reads to her at every chance he gets, simply because he is interested in making her happy. Hanna likes the fact that Michael reads to her. We are never given an exactly good—or even an exact—reason from the author, Schlink, as to why Hanna had never learned how to read properly. “[Hanna lived] in [German-speaking Romania, moving] to Berlin at [age 16], worked at a factory job, [entering] the army at [21]. [Schlink could have referenced] the fact that she was not educated in Germany proper; likewise, he could have invoked her youth and inexperience as mitigating factors…[Schlink] does [n]either.”7 Obviously, Hanna had a very difficult, hard life—whereas Michael has grown up in the lap of luxury in his upper middle-class parents’ home. It is when he grows up and goes to law school when he attends Hanna’s criminal trial, only to find out that there was a document of an order issuing a building full of Jews to be killed. Rather than giving away the fact that she does not how to read, let alone sign an order for the murder of innocent people—Hanna assents to the crime and admits that it was she who gave the order, instead of going through the embarrassing episode of having to let everyone know she can’t read. She hides this fact from the prosecutor and the judge, as well as the jury and the people watching in the courtroom for fear she will be ridiculed for not knowing how to read (perhaps). For whatever reason, Hanna would rather go to jail than succumb to her selfish pride—knowing that she did not give the order to murder anyone. But, because she wants to maintain her self-esteem, she reneges and allows herself to be sentenced to life in prison in a German jail. It is then in prison where Hanna begins a self-transformation. Meanwhile, Michael Berg is now a successful lawyer in New York, divorced, with one daughter named Julia. It is after Berg speaks with a Holocaust survivor that he realizes Hanna is sitting in jail rotting away, wasting away and not taking care of herself. He makes an authoritative decision to effectively find some way of having Hanna released. Michael visits the jail and sees a decrepit old woman, not the woman he once loved so dearly and passionately. Realizing that she is going to die if he does not attempt to get her out of the jail, Michael is bothered by her waif-like figure and listless gaze as Hanna wears a thick woolly gray sweater. He realizes that her entire life is now lifeless, living behind the prison wall. In the interim of being in jail, however, Hanna starts to check out books from the prison library, and effectively teaches herself how to read. Evidence of this is seen in Hanna’s jail cell when he goes to pick her up to take her away from jail after she has been released into his custody. However, at this point, it is too late—Hanna has committed suicide, perhaps knowing that she would never be able to effectively and efficiently be integrated into normal society ever again. The fact that she didn’t know English and had limited reading skills possibly drove her into a frenzy wondering how she would survive in America with the new start that Michael had arranged for her, knowing no one, and so forth. As such, this was the destructive path that Hanna took in order to save herself from the hell of jail, and also from the hell of the outside world to which Michael would have taken her—with which she would have had absolutely no familiarity. Michael, of course, as is expected, weeps bitterly, and feels badly about not having spoken up for Hanna as a law student so many years ago when he was watching her being sentenced—knowing all the while she was innocent because she could not read, which would have been a damning piece of evidence for the prosecution in trying to prove their case with no confession. Even as Michael now realizes that she is gone, he tries to remember the happy times he had together with Hanna, and resolves to never let an injustice go unchecked again. V. Conclusion In Bernhard Schlink’s book The Reader, we are introduced to several themes. The main themes that dominate The Reader are Michael’s coming of age, Hanna’s notorious past as an ex-Nazi guard, and the issue of Hanna’s illiteracy. All these elements are combined to make for a compelling if not amazing read—combining all of the intrigue of World War II Nazi history and a penchant for intriguing storytelling of a love affair gone horribly wrong. WORKS CITED DiYanni, Robert. Literature: Reading Poetry, Fiction, and Drama. US: McGraw-Hill, 2001. Pp. 2031. Emsley, Clive. War, Culture, and Memory. UK: The Open University, 2003. Pp. 3. Phegley, J., et al. Reading Women: Literary Figures and Cultural Icons from the Victorian Age to the Present. Canada: University of Toronto Press, 2005. Pp. 261. Postone, Moishe, et al. Catastrophe and Meaning: The Holocaust and the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Schlink, Bernhard. The Reader. New York: Random House, 1998. Spargo, Robert M. Ehrenreich. After Representation?: The Holocaust, Literature, and Culture. US: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Taberner, Stuart, et al. Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009. Pp. 12. Read More