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read in June, 2009
Brandice said:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
1. When did you understand the significance of the title?
I think I vaguely understood the title within Part 1, with the meaning becoming more and more clear through...more
I used some online discussion questions for the book to do my review
1. When did you understand the significance of the title?
I think I vaguely understood the title within Part 1, with the meaning becoming more and more clear throughout Part 2. The Reader, or main character, was actually my least favorite element of the book. I didn't like him at all.
2. Do you think The Reader is a love story? How would you describe Michael and Hanna's relationship?
I think The Reader could have been a love story, but was too riddled with the sometimes annoying angst of Michael, and I'm not sure the two ever felt real love for each other because they were so entrenched in their own struggles. Michael, regardless of what happened with Hanna, was overly invested in a lifelong process of self-loathing and avoidance of finding himself in any way that would have been separate from Hanna, and I hated that... our happiness is not contingent on any one person, and his inability to see that throughout his entire life was sad. I don't think that Hanna was ever capable of a healthy and true love, not because she was an inherently bad person, but because she lacked the capacity.
3. Did you sympathize with Hanna?
No. I may understand, I may empathize on some small level, and I may be saddened by the situation and everyone's involvement, but I do not sympathize with Hanna. Her situation was extreme and probably deadly had she chosen to act different under the Nazi regime, but she had choices. Her reasons for making those choices are clear and understandable, but they don't elicit sympathy from me.
4. Do you agree with Michael that Hanna was sympathetic with the prisoners she chose to read to her, and that she chose them so that their final month of life would be better?
I don't think we ever knew Hanna well enough to be sure of that. I really don't feel that we ever knew Hanna very well in this book, whether that was intentionally done to allow the reader to create what we wanted of her, or because who she really was wasn't important to the premise of the story. I'm not sure *Hanna* knew herself very well.
5. When the judge confronts Hanna about not unlocking the church, she does not seem to understand what she did wrong. She is completely consumed with her responsibility to keep order. Was this shocking to you? What is lacking in her moral sense?
I don't think her behavior at the trial implies a lack of moral sense at all. I think she was baffled in some ways at trying to understand what she could say in the face of what was done during the Holocaust, and her role was horrible, but also self-preserving. I felt like she wanted everyone to somehow acknowledge or at least understand that she was among many people who made a horrible choice of self preservation over possible death, and living that way for so long conditioned a lot of common sense or decency out of her at the time, and conditioned her (admittedly, with her own permission) to respond as a Nazi rather than as a reasonable person. I understand the outrage toward her, but also her response, however horrible it may have been.
6. Do you think there is a connection between literacy and morality? Do you think Schlink is suggesting such a connection?
As in, are illiterate people immoral? That's absurd, and I would hope that's not what Schlink was suggesting.
7. Michael feels guilt over a variety of things. In what ways, if any, is Michael guilty? Does loving someone who has committed such a horrible crime implicate him?
How could it possible implicate him? I really don't get WHY he feels such guilt throughout the book, and it really left me feeling irritated at him throughout most of it. To let one person color and essentially taint your entire life is absurd and profoundly pathetic, and I don't say that lightly or naively. Being someone who have overcome a lot of things and worked through some very horrible situations and come out of it still a whole and healthy person, I found myself feeling physically angry at Michael's self-pitying float through life. He felt guilty because he was comfortable in his misery and in wanting to be miserable without (or even with) Hanna. I feel disappointment in Hanna, but I understand her, while I just feel complete disgust with Michael through most of the book. He is a coward, through and through.
8. What did you think of Michael's decision to send Hanna the tapes?
It seemed like throwing a dog half of a bone... it was a taste of what Hanna wanted from him, and I might have understood how he kept himself at arm's length if he had done it to punish her, but I felt that he did it because of his cowardice, which disgusted me.
9. Why do you think Hanna killed herself? Do you think she ever came to terms with her guilt as a Nazi? What about her guilt toward Michael?
I don't think that Hanna had guilt toward Michael. I think she killed herself because she didn't fit anywhere, and she finally realized that she didn't even fit with Michael because of how he still kept her at arm's length. I think if he hadn't strung her along with the tapes, she might have killed herself long before.
10. Schlink has been criticized for The Reader. Some say it is wrong of him to try to get people to sympathize with Hanna. Others say he is trying to downplay the culpability of the educated class. Still others think he is blaming Hanna's guilt on illiteracy rather than holding her accountable. Do you agree with any of these criticisms?
I don't think that what Schlink wanted was for us to feel sympathy for Hanna. I think he wanted us to *understand* her. Not forgive, not excuse, not sympathize, but to understand her, because I would imagine her story isn't unique to her, and even if we don't forgive or sympathize with that story, shouldn't we understand it? I understand wanting us to read a story like this one, because it's important to understand what we can become as people if we adhere to something like the Nazi regime, even if out of self preservation. I think the "love" story was much less important than the thought provoked by Hanna's crimes and the implications her behavior has for the human race in a time of mass genocide.
11. Rate The Reader on a scale of 1 to 5.
I'm giving the book at 3. I like some of the questions it raised for me, and the premise is interesting, but the book is flat at times, too weighed down with the cowardice of Michael and too devoid of any character that the reader can truly relate to. I'm interested enough in the story to pursue watching the film version, which I've heard is much better than the book, but the book itself was simply mediocre as a whole. (less)
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