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2013.05.24 02:03

The Reader

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The Reader
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Wolran Kim
March 2013



The Reader gives us multi-layered debates and topics: the relationship between physical and spiritual love, human shame, literature as a human tool, the property of history and the lives of individuals, justice, conflict between generations, and communication between the past and the future. An encounter of a 36-year-old Hanna and 15-year-old Michael in the late 1950s in Germany represents the contemporary conflicts and dilemmas between generations centering on WWII, not just the age difference between men and women. The heavy subject about the liquidation of the past begins with the physical love of Hanna and Michael. This mixture of sexuality and penitence of Germany gives freshness to readers with a strange fusion compared with the existing approach about the Holocaust.

The misunderstanding Michael has toward Hanna shows a gap between generations and is an inevitable reality just like their encounter. Hanna Schmitz has a lack of sympathy for others and a cynicism about life; however, she is in all sincere and clean. All her personality came from her fatal inferiority and complex of illiteracy. Michael changed his life from his encounter with Hannah although he was an ordinary adolescent boy. Their unique ceremony of love – reading books, showering, and making love – shows Hanna’s longing for another life with literacy. Michael says after his separation and reunion with Hannah during her trials, “But what other people in my social environment had done, and their guilt, were in any case a lot less bad than what Hanna had done. I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me.” He cannot be free from history, even though “many war criminals were never brought to trial or punished.”

Hanna’s trials show two issues, whether the complex of illiteracy is a deadly secret to her as much as impelling her to a lifetime in prison, and whether the life of an individual who was caught up in the history of the Nazi organization can be prosecuted as a legal standard. Hanna asks the judge who is driving her as a responsible person, “What would you have done?” Condemning the crimes of individuals during war conditions in national organization is impossible because there is no personal willingness in Hanna’s immoral act. The responsibility rests with the leaders of the Nazi regime, not just with a guard. The standard of criminal offenses during war and the usual are outright different. Also, the law governing the country and the law of human morality are distinctly different.

The first silence of Michael occurs during Hanna’s trials because he knows that her inferiority of illiteracy is a bigger prison than a real prison cell to her. The second silence of Michael happens while he sends recordings to Hanna because he recognizes the judgment of history regarding the death of 300 people and his selfishness of keeping his pure love. He said that he is guilty because he loved a criminal. There is contrast between the other guards who unjustly accuse Hanna and silence Michael in front of Hanna who simply testifies based on the truth with no regard for the situation.

Hanna seems like purity before eating the fruit of the Tree of Good and Evil. In their past, Hanna and Michael were in the Garden of Eden, such as the people of Germany were who lost reason under the flag of the Nazis. Sympathy for Hanna and disgust for the other guards and judges shake the standards of justice. Both the totalitarian society and their effort to judge totalitarianism do not seem very relevant with morality.

Hanna studied Nazi-related books in the prison after teaching herself letters through Michael’s recordings. Her suicide might have come from her skeptical enlightenment about learning. She killed herself as weakling human in front of a giant history when her suffering of illiteracy was collapsed at the moment. She might love Michael because she does not know how to read. Her cold and dominant personality was shielding to protect her uneducated guilty conscience. Michael was innocent to her who abused his power of learning; however, he became the center of that power now. The world is ruled by law; not ruled by morals. The past history cannot receive indulgency through ignorance although history does not exist in pure form, and cannot. History is a mere interpretation created through the eyes of historians.

Michael never sent any personal replies to Hanna in prison while he sent book recordings for 10 years. This fact shows that he was unable to accept her reality of a different image from before the criminal condition. Michael’s cold image would have impacted her determination of suicide. Their paradise was destroyed completely. Then what could she choose except death? Michael visits a survivor of the Holocaust with Hanna’s belongings, money in tin, and also achieves reconciliation with the estranged daughter in front of the grave of Hanna. This shows the direction of how sublime the understanding of shameful history was to the post-war generation. Michael sent recordings to Hanna with love, and he also ignored Hanna’s letters with loathing for that era. These two opposite feelings, love and hatred, represent the feelings of Germany toward their past. The evil in the past is their lovers, families, and even themselves.    

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