The Reader by Bernhard Schlink- Sept BOTM

[Diane]

Review thread: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

[Diane]

Questions from Reading Group Guides

1. At what point does the significance of the book's title become clear to you? Who is "The Reader"? Are there others in the story with an equally compelling claim to this role?

2. When does the difference in social class between Hanna and Michael become most clear and painful? Why does Hanna feel uncomfortable staying overnight in Michael's house? Is Hanna angry about her lack of education?

3. Why is the sense of smell so important in this story? What is it about Hanna that so strongly provokes the boy's desire? If Hanna represents "an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body" [p. 16], why is she the only woman Michael seems able to love?

4. One reviewer has pointed out that "learning that the love of your life used to be a concentration camp guard is not part of the American baby-boomer experience."* Is The Reader's central theme--love and betrayal between generations--particular to Germany, given the uniqueness of German history? Is there anything roughly parallel to it in the American experience?

5. In a novel so suffused with guilt, how is Michael guilty? Does his narrative serve as a way of putting himself on trial? What verdict does he reach? Is he asking readers to examine the evidence he presents and to condemn him or exonerate him? Or has he already condemned himself?

6. When Michael consults his father about Hanna's trial, does his father give him good advice? Why does Michael not act upon this advice? Is the father deserving of the son's scorn and disappointment? Is Michael's love for Hanna meant, in part, to be an allegory for his generation's implication in their parents' guilt?

7. Do you agree with Michael's judgment that Hanna was sympathetic with the prisoners she chose to read to her, and that she wanted their final month of life to be bearable? Or do you see Hanna in a darker light: do the testimonies about her cruelty and sadism ring true?

8. Asked to explain why she didn't let the women out of the burning church, Hanna remembers being urgently concerned with the need to keep order. What is missing in her reasoning process? Are you surprised at her responses to the judge's attempt to prompt her into offering self-defense as an excuse?

9. Why does Hanna twice ask the judge, "what would you have done?" Is the judge sympathetic toward Hanna? What is she trying to communicate in the moment when she turns and looks directly at him?

10. Why does Michael visit the concentration camp at Struthof? What is he seeking? What does he find instead?

11. Michael comments that Enlightenment law (the foundation of the American legal system as well as the German one) was "based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world" [p. 181]. How does his experience with Hanna's trial influence Michael's view of history and of law?

12. What do you think of Michael's decision to send Hanna the tapes? He notices that the books he has chosen to read aloud "testify to a great and fundamental confidence in bourgeois culture" [p. 185]. Does the story of Hanna belie this faith? Would familiarity with the literature she later reads have made any difference in her willingness to collaborate in Hitler's regime?

13. One might argue that Hanna didn't willfully collaborate with Hitler's genocide and that her decisions were driven only by a desire to hide her secret. Does this view exonerate Hanna in any way? Are there any mitigating circumstances in her case? How would you have argued for her, if you were a lawyer working in her defense?

14. Do you agree with the judgment of the concentration camp survivor to whom Michael delivers Hanna's money at the end of the novel? Why does she accept the tea tin, but not the money? Who knew Hanna better--Michael or this woman? Has Michael been deluded by his love? Is he another of Hanna's victims?

15. Why does Hanna do what she does at the end of the novel? Does her admission that the dead "came every night, whether I wanted them or not" [pp. 198-99] imply that she suffered for her crimes? Is complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust an unforgivable sin?

16. How does this novel leave you feeling and thinking? Is it hopeful or ultimately despairing? If you have read other Holocaust literature, how does The Reader compare? *Suzanna Ruta, The New York Times Book Review, July 27, 1997: 8.

[Jane]

1. At what point does the significance of the book’s title become clear to you? Who is “The Reader?” Are there others in the story with an equally compelling claim to this role?
I think the meaning changes. First, Michael reads to Hanna. Then we discover that the young female prisoners were also her “readers.” Hanna becomes “the reader” late in life, and this might be meant to symbolize her awakening to a higher consciousness…? See question #15 for more on this.

2. When does the difference in social class between Hanna and Michael become most clear and painful? Why does Hanna feel uncomfortable staying overnight in Michael's house? Is Hanna angry about her lack of education?
She says that she feels like an intruder in his family’s house. She spends a lot of her time there contemplating the library and books. The fact that his father has read them, and even written two, perhaps makes her feel even more ignorant. I wouldn’t say she is angry about her illiteracy, more embarrassed by it, even ashamed. During the trial, she is willing to admit to writing the report so it won’t be revealed that she can’t read or write.

3. Why is the sense of smell so important in this story? What is it about Hanna that so strongly provokes the boy’s desire? If Hanna represents “an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body” [p. 16], why is she the only woman Michael seems able to love?
He prefers her natural smell, it seemed to me. Perhaps every woman after her smells too clean, too perfumed.

4. One reviewer has pointed out that “learning that the love of your life used to be a concentration camp guard is not part of the American baby-boomer experience.” Is The Reader’s central theme--love and betrayal between generations--particular to Germany, given the uniqueness of German history? Is there anything roughly parallel to it in the American experience?
Perhaps learning that the love of your life voted for Trump ;)

5. In a novel so suffused with guilt, how is Michael guilty? Does his narrative serve as a way of putting himself on trial? What verdict does he reach? Is he asking readers to examine the evidence he presents and to condemn him or exonerate him? Or has he already condemned himself?
He feels guilty for not talking to Hanna during the trial or telling the judge about her illiteracy (see question #6 below). Maybe he feels like he could have saved her years of imprisonment. I’m not sure if he’s condemned himself for this act, but he certainly feels responsible for her, sending her recordings for years and agreeing to help take care of her at her release.

6. When Michael consults his father about Hanna's trial, does his father give him good advice? Why does Michael not act upon this advice? Is the father deserving of the son's scorn and disappointment? Is Michael's love for Hanna meant, in part, to be an allegory for his generation's implication in their parents' guilt?
His father’s advice is that you can’t decide what is best for an adult (the way you can a child). The most you can do is talk to them and give them your advice/opinion, but ultimately it is their life, and they must have the last word. Michael can’t bring himself to talk to Hanna, but neither does he tell the judge about her illiteracy. I don’t know if his father deserves scorn but certainly Michael is disappointed in him as a parent. He is quite distant, removed from both his son’s life and real life in general. As a philosopher, he seems to take Michael’s question as a hypothetical exercise in morality rather than a question with real life implications.

7. Do you agree with Michael's judgment that Hanna was sympathetic with the prisoners she chose to read to her, and that she wanted their final month of life to be bearable? Or do you see Hanna in a darker light: do the testimonies about her cruelty and sadism ring true?
I wanted to believe that she was sympathetic to them, but given what the survivor daughter later says, I ended the book believing the worst, i.e. that she was cruel and sadistic. It is possible that the survivor does not remember which guard Hanna was, (as there was some ambiguity, even in the book that she wrote). However, Hanna is at the very least selfish regarding Michael, as the daughter points out. She essentially scarred him for life. Then again, it could be a bit of both, as most humans are complex and sometimes contradictory beings. She could have used Michael for her own pleasure but also cared for him. She could have felt sympathy for the prisoners and still have been a sadist at times.

8. Asked to explain why she didn’t let the women out of the burning church, Hanna remembers being urgently concerned with the need to keep order. What is missing in her reasoning process? Are you surprised at her responses to the judge's attempt to prompt her into offering self-defense as an excuse?
The fact that human lives are at stake seems to be missing in her reasoning process; she was more concerned with maintaining order than saving lives. She wasn’t worried about getting in trouble, losing her job, even getting killed. She has a very literal and simple mentality and thinks of the prisoners as she would any kind of inventory. This lends credence to the idea that she is/was cruel and sadistic – she is unable to consider the feelings of others.

9. Why does Hanna twice ask the judge, "what would you have done?" Is the judge sympathetic toward Hanna? What is she trying to communicate in the moment when she turns and looks directly at him?
For Hanna, it is a literal appeal to an educated man to tell her what the correct response would have been in that situation. He can’t provide an adequate answer, and everyone else in the courtroom sees this as a “win” for Hanna. However, she just keeps puzzling over it, like there is a right response/action, she just doesn’t understand it.

On the other hand, this could be taken as an appeal to all witnesses in the courtroom, perhaps to all Germans. They did not live through the war, nor were they placed in positions like Hanna. That is not to say we should sympathize with her and her decision to join the SS and follow orders, but what would any of us do if we found ourselves in that position? We like to think we’d be heroic, but we might act just like Hanna and the other guards.

10. Why does Michael visit the concentration camp at Struthof? What is he seeking? What does he find instead?
I think he’s trying to better understand the past, just as he is trying to understand how the woman he loved could have committed the atrocities she is accused of.

11. Michael comments that Enlightenment law (the foundation of the American legal system as well as the German one) was "based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world" [p. 181]. How does his experience with Hanna's trial influence Michael's view of history and of law?
When he’s trying to decide what to do with his law degree, he reflects on the trial and cannot see himself playing any role he witnessed there – defendant, prosecutor, judge, etc. By picking a career in legal history he removes himself from the present day and from the need to “pick a side” in any given case.

12. What do you think of Michael's decision to send Hanna the tapes? He notices that the books he has chosen to read aloud "testify to a great and fundamental confidence in bourgeois culture" [p. 185]. Does the story of Hanna belie this faith? Would familiarity with the literature she later reads have made any difference in her willingness to collaborate in Hitler's regime?
I take this to mean that Hanna did not reap the benefits of bourgeois culture – i.e., an education and perhaps even a moral grounding. We find out little about her life as a child and young woman, so it is difficult to know if these things would have made a difference. I think that is done deliberately. If, by her nature, she was selfish and sadistic, an education would not have kept her from enlisting if it meant she could benefit by doing so.

13. One might argue that Hanna didn't willfully collaborate with Hitler's genocide and that her decisions were driven only by a desire to hide her secret. Does this view exonerate Hanna in any way? Are there any mitigating circumstances in her case? How would you have argued for her, if you were a lawyer working in her defense?
The fact that she starts life as poor and uneducated contributes to her decision to enlist in the SS. Perhaps a certain class of people might have made unwise decisions because they didn’t fully understand what they were agreeing to and/or because once they were in, there was no way out. This does not exonerate her in any way. Isn’t that the classic defense? “I was just following orders.” Hanna also strikes me as very simple and very literal – e.g. when she defends the fact that she picked out prisoners to send back to Auschwitz, knowing they would die. She’s just like, there wasn’t enough room. We had to.

14. Do you agree with the judgment of the concentration camp survivor to whom Michael delivers Hanna's money at the end of the novel? Why does she accept the tea tin, but not the money? Who knew Hanna better--Michael or this woman? Has Michael been deluded by his love? Is he another of Hanna's victims?
See above – I agree that he is one of her victims.

15. Why does Hanna do what she does at the end of the novel? Does her admission that the dead "came every night, whether I wanted them or not" [pp. 198-99] imply that she suffered for her crimes? Is complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust an unforgivable sin?
She may have wanted to free Michael from the responsibility of caring for her, finally let him move on from the past. In this case it would be a very selfless act. On the other hand, it might be very selfish. She may have been terrified of re-entering a world that has moved on. She may have not wanted to be the object of Michael’s pity and charity. She has a history of exploiting the sick and weak (the readers), so to be one of the sick and weak… that would probably be anathema to her.

16. How does this novel leave you feeling and thinking? Is it hopeful or ultimately despairing? If you have read other Holocaust literature, how does The Reader compare?
Although I enjoyed reading it, it left me kind of cold and I’m not sure why. I even went back and re-read parts of it to see if I missed something. I think it’s very well plotted and is doing a lot to address significant issues. It just didn’t do much for me.
I’ve read far too much holocaust literature this year, it seems: All Souls Day, The Guiltless. It even comes up in The Remains of the Day. So maybe I’ve just had my fill of historical guilt for the year.

[Gail]

Warning: My answers have spoilers in them
1. At what point does the significance of the book's title become clear to you? Who is "The Reader"? Are there others in the story with an equally compelling claim to this role?

There are many readers in this book including our narrator, Michael, the girls in the camp, the judicial personnel who read out the charges and the sentence, and later Hanna herself, but I believe that the title refers largely to Michael and to us, the readers of the book.

2. When does the difference in social class between Hanna and Michael become most clear and painful? Why does Hanna feel uncomfortable staying overnight in Michael's house? Is Hanna angry about her lack of education?

Hanna is uncomfortable with herself as an illiterate and as someone that really looks at her life and wonders, rather than knows, that she did the wrong thing. Her class does not seem to shame her as much as these other aspects of herself. However, we come to know that she is poor when Michael visits her building which is clearly one inhabited by the poor. Hanna knows that she may be Michael's lover but she is not his girlfriend and therefore does not belong in his parent's house.

3. Why is the sense of smell so important in this story? What is it about Hanna that so strongly provokes the boy's desire? If Hanna represents "an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body" [p. 16], why is she the only woman Michael seems able to love?

Hanna smells like feminine essence and that reflects sex, strength and a form of caring. As Michael's first she comes to define much of what he will later desire; a time of sharing intimacy when he was still largely innocent. Michael, when he first meets Hanna did not yet embody the shame of his generation, a generation that did not know what to do with the guilt and shame of their parents. Do they own this quilt and shame also? Do they ignore it which seems monstrous to them?

4. One reviewer has pointed out that "learning that the love of your life used to be a concentration camp guard is not part of the American baby-boomer experience."* Is The Reader's central theme--love and betrayal between generations--particular to Germany, given the uniqueness of German history? Is there anything roughly parallel to it in the American experience?

I think the book is uniquely German in the way that Germany attempted to differentiate between the Nazi and the "regular" German people. Japan, for instance, did not attempt this. The whole country was humiliated and the average citizen lived this shame. I think that America and other countries have certainly experienced huge generational betrayals, for example the Civil War followed by Jim Crow, but who is living with shame and who is the victim of the betrayal is clearer than in Germany.

5. In a novel so suffused with guilt, how is Michael guilty? Does his narrative serve as a way of putting himself on trial? What verdict does he reach? Is he asking readers to examine the evidence he presents and to condemn him or exonerate him? Or has he already condemned himself?

I felt that Michael was largely confused throughout much of the book but that ultimately he does condemn himself. This is not spelled out narratively but the numbness, cold tone and quiet despair permeate the book.

6. When Michael consults his father about Hanna's trial, does his father give him good advice? Why does Michael not act upon this advice? Is the father deserving of the son's scorn and disappointment? Is Michael's love for Hanna meant, in part, to be an allegory for his generation's implication in their parents' guilt?

Yes, I do believe the whole story of Hanna and Michael's relationship is allegorical but what makes the book so strong is that it is not JUST an allegory. It works as a story about relationships as well as about national quilt. Michael's father gives him good advice from Michael's father's point of view. One can not know what another person truly needs and without this knowledge how can you act in that person's best interest. However, that leaves one totally passive in the face of individual circumstances. One feels that Michael should have followed his father's advice and talked to Hanna but that was not very realistic either.

7. Do you agree with Michael's judgment that Hanna was sympathetic with the prisoners she chose to read to her, and that she wanted their final month of life to be bearable? Or do you see Hanna in a darker light: do the testimonies about her cruelty and sadism ring true?

I think that Hanna is removed from most empathetic emotions. I don't think that she had a cruel or sadistic nature but she did have a rather simple and uncomplicated view of life. Rather than thinking that she was attempting to make their final month more bearable, I think she chose people to read to her that would be good at reading and then she would send them to their deaths because that was her job.


8. Asked to explain why she didn't let the women out of the burning church, Hanna remembers being urgently concerned with the need to keep order. What is missing in her reasoning process? Are you surprised at her responses to the judge's attempt to prompt her into offering self-defense as an excuse?


At the church, I think that Hanna really was concerned that she was being put into a situation where she would have to act without orders. I think she was concerned about order, but it was largely her sense that the only thing she could really count on was what was expected of her rather than a moral foundation that would have ruled out her job duties in favor of saving lives. Note also that the villagers were very happy to have Hanna blamed for insisting on "order" because that also got them off the hook of not being able to save lives, which clearly they could have.

9. Why does Hanna twice ask the judge, "what would you have done?" Is the judge sympathetic toward Hanna? What is she trying to communicate in the moment when she turns and looks directly at him?

Hanna is asking the question that occupied many Germans after the war. What should we have done? What could we have done differently to have prevented this outcome? The outcome was not just the extermination camps, but the whole destruction of German cities and a lost generation of German men. The guilt and the shame likely permeated every thought right after the war, but then did they begin to think: "there is nothing I could have done", "there was nothing that I was responsible for".

10. Why does Michael visit the concentration camp at Struthof? What is he seeking? What does he find instead?

I think that Michael was seeking knowledge and understanding of what it was really like to be at a camp, either as a guard or as a prisoner. Instead he found a profound numbness, an even further removal from what Hanna experienced or what Hanna might have done at a camp.

11. Michael comments that Enlightenment law (the foundation of the American legal system as well as the German one) was "based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world" [p. 181]. How does his experience with Hanna's trial influence Michael's view of history and of law?

Law and order, rule of law, conformity to the rules of one's culture, is what allows people to live comfortably together in trust. However, "order" is not one of the Ten Commandments. I believe that Michael's experience of the trial removed him even further from respect for the law. He fell back to the study of law, rather than the practice of law.

12. What do you think of Michael's decision to send Hanna the tapes? He notices that the books he has chosen to read aloud "testify to a great and fundamental confidence in bourgeois culture" [p. 185]. Does the story of Hanna belie this faith? Would familiarity with the literature she later reads have made any difference in her willingness to collaborate in Hitler's regime?

One can not tell if Hanna had read some of the great books she would have acted differently. The tone of the book does not promise that reading. Hanna could have been forgiven in regards signing up to be a guard because she couldn't have read about anything that the Nazi were doing but once she was assigned to the camp she clearly knew exactly what was going on.

13. One might argue that Hanna didn't willfully collaborate with Hitler's genocide and that her decisions were driven only by a desire to hide her secret. Does this view exonerate Hanna in any way? Are there any mitigating circumstances in her case? How would you have argued for her, if you were a lawyer working in her defense?

Yes, if I had been her lawyer I would have used that argument. The book does not however. Clearly, Hanna went to extreme lengths to hide her illiteracy to the point of preferring to be guilty than to be found out. However, I believe that Hanna already felt that she was guilty in a legal sense and therefore it was better to not be found out as the legal outcome was already a given.


14. Do you agree with the judgment of the concentration camp survivor to whom Michael delivers Hanna's money at the end of the novel? Why does she accept the tea tin, but not the money? Who knew Hanna better--Michael or this woman? Has Michael been deluded by his love? Is he another of Hanna's victims?

Michael is another of Germany's victims but he is an educated and thoughtful man able to make his own decisions and therefore I did not feel that he was specifically a victim of Hanna's actions although he did suffer in regards his own actions when it came to Hanna. I think that the woman who accepted the tin knew better about what the camps were like, she had lived with that moral dilemma in a real life. In other words she had lived with; "what am I willing to do to survive". She had come to the conclusion that she did not owe absolution to the guards and that she did not want anything that Hanna gave her that might grant even a fraction of that absolution. She kept that tin because it was a stand in for one that had been taken from her. It was not a gift.

15. Why does Hanna do what she does at the end of the novel? Does her admission that the dead "came every night, whether I wanted them or not" [pp. 198-99] imply that she suffered for her crimes? Is complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust an unforgivable sin?

Yes, complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust is an unforgivable sin. However, the book asks; exactly who are the guilty? Are we all guilty? If some are guiltier than others, what must the others do to mitigate that sin? I believe that Hanna felt that as long as she was in prison she was paying for her acts. Facing what she does at the end of the novel, I think she could see no way to continue to pay.

16. How does this novel leave you feeling and thinking? Is it hopeful or ultimately despairing? If you have read other Holocaust literature, how does The Reader compare?

I found the layers, from being a book about relationships to being a book about national guilt, were really well done and better than anything that other Holocaust literature has given me. I felt that the treatment of shared shame was presented without resort to lengthy philosophical tracts. Much of the Holocaust literature has presented the horrors, and the moral dilemmas in survival more graphically and ultimately with much more of a punch to the gut. For me, the book was ultimately despairing with only a glimmer of hope in the act of reading.

[Jane]

At the church, I think that Hanna really was concerned that she was being put into a situation where she would have to act without orders. I think she was concerned about order, but it was largely her sense that the only thing she could really count on was what was expected of her rather than a moral foundation that would have ruled out her job duties in favor of saving lives. Note also that the villagers were very happy to have Hanna blamed for insisting on "order" because that also got them off the hook of not being able to save lives, which clearly they could have.

This is a great point, very well put -- something I struggled to figure out as I was reading it.

[Jenna]

1. At what point does the significance of the book's title become clear to you? Who is "The Reader"? Are there others in the story with an equally compelling claim to this role?

The obvious comes out when he starts to read to her, when she is obviously not able to read and then later does so. But Michael also talks about telling the story to himself many times and the pace is so slow that if feels like he is reading it aloud to himself trying to understand. It is very interesting to me that in a first person story, the title refers to the main character, the narrator, in the third person, and I think this is because he is so blind to his own story. This brings in another reader, his obtuseness is so much of what is going on that I felt myself to be an important part of the story as a reader and interpreter that he cannot be.

7. Do you agree with Michael's judgment that Hanna was sympathetic with the prisoners she chose to read to her, and that she wanted their final month of life to be bearable? Or do you see Hanna in a darker light: do the testimonies about her cruelty and sadism ring true?

Not a chance. Just look at how she treated Michael for the first half of the book and we have seen what we needed to see about how Hanna treats others, especially those who are dependent on her. That is purpose of the first half. This book is to show us how Michael, as a victim, cannot see the effects. The main character as signaled by the title is not Hanna, it is Michael.

10. Why does Michael visit the concentration camp at Struthof? What is he seeking? What does he find instead?
13. One might argue that Hanna didn't willfully collaborate with Hitler's genocide and that her decisions were driven only by a desire to hide her secret. Does this view exonerate Hanna in any way? Are there any mitigating circumstances in her case? How would you have argued for her, if you were a lawyer working in her defense?

This is Michael’s post-hoc justification for her actions but in her relationship with him we see every aspect of her sadistic and manipulative behavior as prison guard, including her lashing out with a whip when angry. Michael thinks he loves her because of the punishment and reward manipulation she employed and he cannot see the underlying personality, but we should not be fooled.

8. Asked to explain why she didn't let the women out of the burning church, Hanna remembers being urgently concerned with the need to keep order. What is missing in her reasoning process? Are you surprised at her responses to the judge's attempt to prompt her into offering self-defense as an excuse?

11. Michael comments that Enlightenment law (the foundation of the American legal system as well as the German one) was "based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world" [p. 181]. How does his experience with Hanna's trial influence Michael's view of history and of law?

12. What do you think of Michael's decision to send Hanna the tapes? He notices that the books he has chosen to read aloud "testify to a great and fundamental confidence in bourgeois culture" [p. 185]. Does the story of Hanna belie this faith? Would familiarity with the literature she later reads have made any difference in her willingness to collaborate in Hitler's regime?

Similarly to 13 above, in response to 8, 11 and 12, Michael’s attempts to put cultural guardrails around Hanna is a way of trying to deny and rationalize his personal experience of her, to put her behavior into an understandable self-defense, to raise her up by changing her social status, as opposed to the “banality of evil” category, that human nature is not good and if given permission people will be more concerned about order than other people’s lives – these are prisoners so better they die than possibly escape. One would like to think that culture had a deep effect but Nazism was embraced at all levels of society.

14. Do you agree with the judgment of the concentration camp survivor to whom Michael delivers Hanna's money at the end of the novel? Why does she accept the tea tin, but not the money? Who knew Hanna better--Michael or this woman? Has Michael been deluded by his love? Is he another of Hanna's victims?

Michael has been destroyed by his relationship with Hanna. As the American says to him towards the end, you had a brief unhappy marriage and your daughter is in boarding school. We see that the way Hanna was able to play on his vulnerability (his home life is an emotional void), her easy way with rewards and punishments, the use of the belt when she felt most threatened, is of a piece with the amoral choices of the prison guard she was. His attempt to excuse this as all about embarrassment and illiteracy is more self-delusional entanglement, and part of why he cannot visit her or even more write to her now that he does not have that as a barrier. He is not able to reconcile himself to what feels like a willing participation in his own ruining. He calls himself and her guilty in his soul and he cannot say it out loud.

15. Why does Hanna do what she does at the end of the novel? Does her admission that the dead "came every night, whether I wanted them or not" [pp. 198-99] imply that she suffered for her crimes? Is complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust an unforgivable sin?

She is of course devastated by his ongoing guilt because she has decided that since she has accepted responsibility for the deaths as fact and that is enough, and that she does not need to recognize any moral or emotional failure that might create a need to apologize to the living. So she can't see why he wouldn't still love her. She thinks that the love created by manipulation and power was real. This is the delusion of the powerful and a terrible legacy for victims to continue to struggle against.

16. How does this novel leave you feeling and thinking? Is it hopeful or ultimately despairing? If you have read other Holocaust literature, how does The Reader compare?

Quite a unique perspective on the legacy - the quiet effects of an intimate entanglement with the morality and attitudes and personality of Nazism on a bright 15 year old, just blossoming, leading to a heart breaking, lingering blight he doesn't see, that not even a trial can help bring him to recognize or overcome. Watching a 15 year old "fall in love with" an older, manipulative and emotionally abusive woman was deeply disturbing to me. Even more disturbing however is that as he grows up, he never comes to see this aspect of her personality, he is never free from her and it has destroyed his emotional life well into adulthood. So I didn't love reading this book, the simple first person prose, the total blindness of the narrator, is like a stone in my chest. But analyzing it afterwards, I think it is quite powerful to think about what it implies.

[Gail]

Great answers Jenna. I learned from reading them. Thank you

[Jenna]

Gail wrote: "Great answers Jenna. I learned from reading them. Thank you"

Thanks Gail, this format of questions has strengths because it forced me to really think things out, but it did mean that it started out as less of a dialogue - I didn't read others before I wrote my own and I skipped a few. Now reading I'm interested in how the point you make about allegory fits in with my vision of Michael as a victim of abuse, feeling guilty and silenced by his early love and unable to finally really handle it. He discusses this directly a few times during the trial, saying that his generation is choosing silence, that when he reaches for understanding he loses the ability to hold her responsible and vis versa. The fact that the trial does not help him/German society to do this, that putting her in prison and bringing her a civilizing influence of bourgeois culture or an attitude of repentance doesn't do this all speaks to the trauma that is still unhealed for this "second generation".