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?Ģ. The bond between the two is continued in this unique way until Hanna’s release from prison, when, in the face of Michael’s ambivalence and Hanna’s shame, their story reaches its anguished conclusion.Ī parable of German guilt and atonement and a love story of stunning power, The Reader is also a work of literature that is unforgettable in its psychological complexity, its moral nuances, and its stylistic restraint. To help himself through nights of insomnia he begins to read his favorite books aloud into a tape recorder, and he sends the tapes to Hanna in prison. Married and divorced, Michael has become a scholar of legal history and suffers from a haunting emotional numbness. She chooses not to reveal her secret and as a result is sentenced to life. During the proceedings, it becomes clear that Hanna is hiding something that is–to her–more shameful than murder, something that could possibly save her from going to prison.
The reader by bernhard schlink essays trial#
He is shocked when he recognizes Hanna in the courtroom, on trial with a group of former concentration camp guards. Years later, when Michael is studying law at the university, he is part of a seminar group attending one of the many belated Nazi war crime trials. When Hanna disappears following a misunderstanding, Michael is overcome with guilt and loss. Later, he visits the woman to thank her and is drawn into a love affair that is as intoxicating as it is unusual–their meetings become a ritual of reading aloud (Michael reads to Hanna, at her request), taking showers, and making love. When he gets sick in the street one day on his way home from school, a woman brings him into her apartment and helps him to wash up. Michael Berg is fifteen and suffering from hepatitis. The questions, discussion topics, and author biography that follow are intended to enhance your group’s reading of Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader, a haunting story of love and guilt in which the legacy of Nazi crimes enters a young man’s life in an unexpected and irrevocable way. From the first page, ensnares both heart and mind." -Los Angeles Times "A formally beautiful, disturbing and finally morally devastating novel.
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