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Guilty In Eudora Schlink's The Reader

1823 Words8 Pages

Throughout The Reader, from adolescence to adulthood, Michael is “haunted by a personal sense of guilt” (Munteanu). He feels guilty for a variety of reasons, predominantly his lifelong addiction to Hanna. Since the beginning of their ill-fated relationship in his teens, he knew there could be no future for them; not even as friends. Yet, when she reappears in his college years, the lovesickness Michael felt as a child seems to come creeping back. Even as he tries to forget her after the trial, it floods back following the collapse of his marriage. His guilt for Hanna is only exacerbated by his and his classmates’ guilt for Germany’s role in World War II. They condemn the older generation, and Michael blames himself for falling in love with …show more content…

Through the birth of his daughter, the failure of his marriage, and all other personal relationships after that, she is always there. “Because in all [his] confused half-waking thoughts that swirled in tormenting circles of memories and dreams around [his] marriage and [his] daughter and [his] life, it was always Hanna who predominated” (Schlink 183) So, he decided to “read to Hanna. [He] read to Hanna on tape” (Schlink 183). Perhaps it was guilt for not having sought her out and spoken to her during the trial. Perhaps it was the loneliness that followed Michael around after she left when he was fifteen. More likely than not, Michael’s lifelong obsession with Hanna caused him to reach back and try to hold on to one of their old rituals. He is not able to bathe or sleep with her, so he instead decides to read to her. This is only further proven when the first book he records to send to her in prison is The Odyssey – the first book he ever read to her as a child. Soon Michael “began writing [himself], [so he] read these pieces aloud to her as well” (Schlink 185). “Hanna became the court before which once again [he] concentrated all [his] energies, all [his] creativity, all [his] critical imagination” (Schlink 185). Hanna is the be all and end all for Michael. Even without speaking for over a decade, he still values her opinion of himself the

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Furthermore, he felt very lonely because he lost his parents which changed his priorities, he was trying to find a companion. Also, Michael feels like he is treated differently than his biological parents. In the text it states, “Though he denied it, he did hate Esther. She was so different from his mother and father” (Rylant 2). This excerpt makes it evident that Michael was forgetting that Esther is a different person.

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It was all part of the game. If it meant them letting me stick around to steal their secrets so the Allies could win the war, I’d burn every last book in Berlin” (Gratz 36). This shows how the time period affects Michael because he doesn’t like burning books, as he says it feels like it is burning away a part of his soul, but he would do anything to help the Allies win the war. Furthermore, Michael has a fear of heights, which bites back at him multiple

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Compassion and forgiveness is not something everyone gives but is something you should give to everyone. Even when they don’t deserve it. Compassion and forgiveness is a theme in To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee when Atticus tells Scout not to be angry at the people who are against him, when he defends Bob Ewell’s behavior after the Tom Robinson case, and when Scout saw the world in Boo Radley’s shoes. And in real life, when a woman pardoned a man on the gallows, before he was hung, even though he murdered her son, and a woman forgave two boys that pushed a cart over a railing onto her, causing many injuries When word goes around about Atticus’s decision to try to defend Tom Robinson, Scout becomes irked by everyone who mocks Atticus for defending Tom Robinson. Atticus tells her, “It’s different this time [...]

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Hanna has what the narrator describes as the perfect life. Her parents are together, her house is friendly and her dad even visits their fifth-grade class. The two best friends were perfectly content with their life and no matter what they would not be separated nor turn against each other. “We were the girls with the wrong school supplies, and everything we did after that, even the things done just like everyone else, were the wrong things to do” (Horrock 473). Hanna and the narrator did not care whether they were doing the wrong thing socially, as long as they had each other.

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Schlink uses characterisation at the beginning of the novel to convey to the reader that Michael is a fifteen-year-old boy, anxious to grow up, struggling with the conflict internally that is felt by the majority of young adults. Sometimes he feels incredibly confident, brilliant, charismatic and popular, however, sometimes feels “like an enormous failure who has no friends and is not at all pleasant to look at.” There is no in-between to these feelings. When Michael meets Hanna Schmidt, “he is immediately drawn to her, but does not understand why. Prior to meeting Hanna, he has had no intimate experiences but is attracted to her in a way he does not fully comprehend.”

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