The Reader

Pantheon Books
1997.
218 p.
0679442790
A Novel by Bernhard Schlink
Publisher:
Pub date:
Pages:
ISBN:
Awards Nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award and Oprah Book Club selection
Synopsis
Hailed for its coiled eroticism and the moral claims it makes upon the reader, this
mesmerizing novel is a story of love and secrets, horror and compassion,
unfolding against the haunted landscape of postwar
Germany.
When he falls ill on his way home from school, fifteen-year-old Michael Berg is
rescued by Hanna, a woman twice his age. In time she becomes his lover--then
she inexplicably disappears. when Michael next sees her, he is a young law
student, and she is on trial for a hideous crime. As he watches her refuJe to
defend her innocence, Michael gradually realizes that Hanna may be guarding
a
secret she considers more shameful than murder.
Background I nformation
The Reader (Der Vorleser) is an award-winning novel by German law professor
and
judge
Bernhard Schlink. lt was published
in Germany in 19g5 and in the
United states (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway) in 19g7. lt
concerns itself with the difficulties of comprehending the Holocaust as
experienced by the generations growing
up aftenvard, and whether it can be
understood through language alone, a question
increasingly at the center of
literature about the Holocaust in the late 20th and early 21st centuries as it
begins to fade from living memory.
Schlink's book was well received not
just
in his native country, where it was a
change from the detective novels he had been writing up till that point, winning
several awards, but in the United States as well. lt became the first German
novel to top the New York Times bestseller list and Oprah Winfrey made it a
selection of her book club. lt has been translated into 37 other languages, and
been assigned in college-level courses on Horocaust riterature.
Summary
Michael Berg is fifteen and suffering from hepatitis" 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. 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), tJt<ing
showers, and making love. when Hanna disappears following a
misunderstanding,
Michael is overcome with guilt and loss.
Years later, when Michael is studying raw at the university, he is part of a
seminar group
attending one of the many belated Nazi war crime trials. He is
shocked when he recognizes Hanna in the courtroom, on trial with a group of
former concentration camp guards. 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.
She chooses not to
reveal her secret and as a result is sentenced to life.
Married and divorced, Michael has become a scholar of legal history and suffers
from a haunting emotional numbness. To help himself through nighis of insomnia
he begins to read his favorite books aloud into a tape recorder, and he sends the
tapes to Hanna in prison. 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.
A parable
of German guilt
and atonement and a love story of stunning power,
The Reader is also a work of literature that is unforgettabie in its psychological
complexity, its moral nuances, and its stylistic restraint.
Film Adaptation (from imdb.com)
A film based on the novel is in production,
slated for release on December 12,
2008. The film is directed by Stephen Daldry with Ralph Fiennes in the lead role
and Kate Winslet as Hanna Schmitz.
Film synopsis :ln postwar
Germany, a young man's decades-long obsession with
an older woman runs headlong into a war crimes trial, where he learns an a6ul
truth.
Biography of Bernhard Schlink
Bernhard Schlink (Born 6 July 1944 in Bielefeld) is
a German writer with a legal background. He
became a
judge
at the Constitutional Court of the
federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 19BB
and is a professor for public law and the philosophy
of law at Humboldt University, Bedin, Germany as
of January 2006.
Contents
Bernhard Schlink was born in Germany in 1944. A
professor of law at the University of Berlin and a
practicing judge,
he is the author of several prize-
winning crime novels. He lives in Bonn and Berlin.
Bernhard Schlinkwas born in Grossdornberg, Germany, in 1944, to a German
father and a Swiss mother. He grew up in the university town of Heidelberg, and
went on himself to a university career, earning a law degree and studying in
Heidelberg and Berlin. His field is constitutional law, and in that field, he is a
respected professor and author. He also serves as a
judge
with the
Constitutional Law Court in Bonn. His career testifies to the hopes he had, but
time has brought its share of disillusionment: "l had a belief in
justice
and
rationality that in fact was a secularised version of my parents' belief in God.
Growing older I am losing that kind of belief."
Writing fiction came to Schlink relatively late. He became a successful writer of
mystery novels. He has written Selbs Justiz (with Walter Popp, 1987), Die
gordische Schleife (1988), and Selbs Betrug (1992). "My mysteries are not
entirely orthodox insofar as they don't
just
tell the story of a crime, they also deal
with recent German history." Two of the novels are the beginning of a trilogy that
will present "Germany's post-war history in three mysteries." The third novel is
being written.
The Reader was a departure. Published as Der Vorleser in 1995, the book
quickly proved to be a European success. There was a tremendous difference in
the impact Schlink was used to -- "the
audience I've reached with this book is
much bigger than the audience I'd reached with my mysteries." He attributes
much of its success to having a focus different from the general run of German
World War ll fiction: "The
Reader is one of the first books, I think, that addresses
how the generation that came after deals with what the previous generation did."
A United States edition appeared in 1997, and was well reviewed. The book
received a tremendous boost in sales when it was made a selection of Oprah's
Book Club, in February of 1999. lt has now been translated into 23 languages,
f nterview with Author (Ron Hogan, Beatrice, 1997 Link below)
h ttp : //www. beatri ce. co mli n te rv i ews/s c h I i n k/
RH: Because you're primarily known in Germany as a writer of popular crime
fiction, did The Reader catch your readers off guard?
BS: Not really. My mysteries are not entirely orthodox insofar as they don't
just tell the
story of a crime, theyalso deal with recent German history. So this wasn't too far out for
[readers].
But the audience I've reached with this book is much bigger than the audience
I'd reached with my mysteries.
RH: And that contemplation seems crucialto the way modern Germans approach
the problem of their past and their immediate ancestors.
BS: lt's been one of the big subjects for my generation. For many families it's a personal
issue, because it pits fathers against their children. One of my favorite teachers, the one
who taught me English, taught me to love the English language, also taught us
gymnastics and we could see his SS tattoo.
RH: Has it been dealt with in German literature
prior to your novel? Part of the
problem for American readers is that, even if this was extensively discussed in
Germany, we would know almost next to nothing about that because our exposure
to European literature is so selective.
BS: There were many books right after the war, and then we didn't have very many
books in the '5Os and early'60s. The literature from the '60s to the'80s is mainly about
the Holocaust itself. The Reader is one of the first books, I think, that addresses how the
generation that came after deals with what the previous generation did. And that's why I
think the book has found the interest it's found. My generation, and also the generation
after mine, wanted something that deals with the question of how we cope with the
Holocaust and the participation of our role models in it.
RH: Perhaps these questions gain a certain
prominence in German culture today
as an effect of reunification, as Germans are forced to ask themselves what it is to
be one Germany again.
BS: I think that's right, but reunification also raises questions about Germany from
abroad. There are new concerns, new interests, and new questions about how the rest
of Europe and America will live with a unified Germany. And in what used to be the
GDR, the question of how one deals with the past is again a very real, up-to- date
question with the aftermath of the collapse of Communism, and comparisons -- valid or
not -- are inevitable. But we all have to recognize that Germany is a nation with a
particular past, and we all have to cope with that past.
RH: What's next for you?
BS: My two mystery novels were always meant to be parts one and two of a trilogy, so I
will write one last mystery that deals with Germany's
post-war history. The first one was
about how the past of the Third Reich still reaches into our present time; the second one
was about '68 and the terrorism of the '70s. And the third will be about what came after
reunification.
Bibliography
Titles in English
1997 The Reader, translated by Carol Brown Janeway, New
york: pantheon
2001 Flights of Love; Sfories, translated by John E. Woods, New York: Pantheon
2005 se/f's Punishmenf, Bernhard schlink and walter
popp,
translated by
Rebecca Morrison, New York: Vintage Books
2007 se/f's Deception, translated by Peter constantine, New
york:
vintage
Crime/Black Lizard
2007 Homecomrng translated by Michael Henry Heim, New
york: pantheon
2009 se/f's Murder, weidenfeld & Nicolson, fo be released 13 March 2009
Literary Works in German
1987 Se/bs Justiz (Selfs Punishment; with Walter Popp)
1988 Die gordische
Schleife (The Gordian Knot), Zurich Diogenes
1992 Se/bs Betrug, Zurich Diogenes
1995 Der Vorleser (The Reader), Zurich: Diogenes
2000 Liebesfluchfen (Flights of Love)
,
Zurich: Diogenes
2001 Se/bs Mord, Zurich Diogenes
2006 Die Heimkehr
Discussion Questions
(From Reading Group Guides
http :/iwww. read i nq
g
ro u
pg
u id es. com/q u ides R/readerl . asp
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? ls 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? lf 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."* ls The Reader's central theme--love and betrayal between
generations--particular to Germany, given the uniqueness of German history? ls
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
serye as a way of putting himself on trial? What verdict does he reach? ls 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? ls the father deserving
of the son's scorn and disappointment? ls 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?
B. 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?" ls 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 Hifler'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? ls 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.
198-991 imply that she suffered for her crimes? ls complicity in the crimes oi tfre
Holocaust an unforgivable sin?
16. How does this novel leave you feeling and thinking? ls it hopeful or ultimately
despairing? lf you have read other Holocaust literature, how does The Reader
compare?
Discussion
Questions from Novelist library database
What does Hanna look for in Michael?
We should not lose sight of the fact that The Reader is set in a Germany in which
vast numbers of the men in Hanna's generation
are dead. On one level, what
Hanna is looking for is simply a man -- there are not all that many of them
around. The twenty-year age difference is striking, and -- in this country, at least -
- apparently shocking. When Schlink appeared on Oprah Winfrey's television
program,
he was amazed to find how much of the studio audience's reaction was
taken up with the age difference. In Europe, it was pretty much a non-issue. This
is not to say that finding a very young partner
did not have ramifications that were
particularly
attractive to Hanna. Scarcely more than a child, Michael was very
impressionable and malleable, and Hanna was very much a person who wished
to be in charge. As a child, Michael had not really made himself into a finished
person -- this, too, fit Hanna's wishes. She was peculiarly
uninterested in Michael
t--
as a person. Even something as simple as a birthday is passed over without a
thought: "When I had asked her about hers . . . she hadn't asked me what mine
was." (p. 73) She does not use Michael's name when she speaks to him. She
calls the shots and dictates the terms:
"We did not have a world that we shared;
she gave me the space in her life that she wanted me to have. I had to be
content with that." (p.77) That Michael is a schoolboy is a real convenience,
since it means that he is in an environment in which it can be fairly natural to
supply the reading sessions that Hanna wants. In general, the relationship is one
in which Hanna has identified her own needs, and arranged to have them filled,
almost anonymously. While the sex is clearly a mutual pleasure, Michael is much
more needy in that respect. He is a frustrated romantic, while Hanna is an
opportunistic realist.
ls the age difference important?
One of the most striking aspects of the novel is the great disparity of age
between Hanna and Michael. The relative ages take on an added importance as
a way of examining the relationship between the WWll generation and that of the
post-war period. lt is an unusual pairing -- in this country it would be not only an
oddity, but a crime (typically, a misdemeanor), As with other aspects of the novel,
what is troublesome is that Hanna is in a position of control, and her actions have
a flavor of taking improper advantage. On Michael's part, he is too engaged in
the relationship to worry much about demographics. As a child, it
just
doesn't
register much: "Over thirty? lt's hard to guess ages when you're not that old
yourself and won't be anytime soon." (p. 15) Looking back from maturity, the gulf
is much more noticeable: "When I see a woman of thirty-six today, I find her
young. But when I see a boy of fifteen, I see a child." (p 40) Youth is the one
quality that Hanna recognizes in Michael; she does not dignify him with his
proper name, but invariably calls him "kid." Translation makes attention to
linguistic detail dangerous -- English offers a cluster of associations with "kid,"
from the camaraderie of youths (who could easily be technical adults) to the
Jazz-Age echoes of "Oh, you kid." These are not Schlink's associations. The
German term he uses for "kid" is Jungchen. lt is dated, appropriate to the time-
frame of the novel, but mildly quaint in the contemporary world. lts connotations
do not spill over into adulthood; it is not a male-bonding term (that we'd find, for
example, in the army), but a domestic term that would typically be used, e.g. by a
mother speaking of her pre-pubescent son. lt is a term that emphasizes the
relative position of the padners, at the time that the relationship is still sexual.
That it remains the way Hanna thinks of Michael is shown by the first words she
speaks when she finally sees him again, shortly before her scheduled release:
"You've grown up, kid." (p. 196) Time has arranged that the appellation is
contradicted by the words of the brief sentence, but "kid" is still what Michael
means to Hanna.
"So what would you have done?" (p. 111)
This is the central question of the book. lt is the implicit application of the Biblical
standard -- don't
judge
if you are yourself guilty. Hanna clearly anticipates that
what she did would turn out to be what anyone would do. lt was not a piece of
grandstanding
on herpart, "Hanna
meant itas a serious question.,,(p.
111) lt
was as close as she wourd come to coming out onlop in a courtroom
confrontation'
The personalization
is crucii; ft,"lrog"
comes off as evasive and
nonresponsive
when he frames
his answer irpurronally:
". . . one must distance
oneself'
' '"
(p'
112)The question
is one that remains tive, that everyieader
must
ask himself.
Can outrage replace plausibility,
""n
*" be certain that -- faced with
social and intellectual
limitations
like Hannis -- we would inevitably
make the
moral decision that seems
so imperative
from tne perspective
of distance
and
safety?
Was Hanna a monster
or a victim?
The Reader is an unusual
book in.that the major characters
will be accepted in
remarkably
different fashions
by different reaoLrs.
Hrnn" can be comfortably
placed
anywhere
on a continuurn
that runs all the way from
,,There
but for the
qtq99
of God go rl. to.".How
can you
do that and stiil cail yourserf
human?,,
Schlink,
closer to the historical
events that inspired the novel, seems to have
more sympathy
with Hanna than many of his ieaders.
paradoxicatty,
ttris very
simply written,
brief novel carries a message
of unremitting
complexity.
Black and
white are not the colors with which to forml useful morar picture;
grays
and
unexpected
shadings
are more to the point.
The rine between
"ggi"rio,-
"no
victim is not always
clearly drawn. Michael
."rt"iniv r"arns that lesson. when, in
court' he belatedly
learns of Hanna's dark side -- oi,'"t any rate, a still darker side
than he already
knew -- it undermines
ail his prans
ior entering the regal
profession'
All the stock roles are compromised
-- defending
and prosecuting
both representing
an irresp_onsibry
sjvrize!
"*"gg"Ltion,
,,and
judging
was the
most grotesque
oversimplification
of
-"11."
1p.
rz6j H"nna,s personal
stance is
startling.
At her triar, she is not ashamed.
bettinj to ine truth seems more
important
than finding
a defense,
and (apart
trori ttre illiteracy),
the truth was not
something
she felt that she needed to conceal. "Hanna
wanted to do the right
thing'
when she thought
she was being done an in;ustice,
she contradicted
it,
and when something
was righfly
craimJd
or artegei,
,h"
""t
nowredged
it.,, (p.
109) she seems
baffled thal pebple
would toot it her wartime
actions and be
outraged'
lt is Michael
who defined the dilemma trrai rre never was able to
comfortably
resolve: "l wanted
simultaneousry
to unJ"rrt"nd
Hanna,s
crime and
to condemn
it' But it was too terrible for that. wn"n itri"o to understand
it, I had
the feeling I was failing to condemn
it as it must be condemned.
when I
condemned
it as it must be condemned,
there was no room for understanding.,,
(p' 157)while
there was a feering
that doing monstrous
things did not
inescapably
brand one as
"
tonit"r,
how t6 accommodate
6oth those aspects
in
a single image
is never made crear. rt is not
"rrv, "nJ
,"y not be possibre.
ls there too much thinking going
on?
In its social context, the concerns
examined
in The Reader have the ring of truth,
but it looks a bit overly introspective
from an Americ"n p"rrp"ctive.
world war ll
and the Holocaust
were prime
exampresgl
flr9 orng;i,
of unexamined
action,
and the horrible price
that it could exact. The Germin g"n"r"tion
that came after
the war -- particurarry
on the academic
tevei --;;
;;"rstomed
to rooking
at
actions and their motivations in absolutely excruciating detail. Michael's father is
a classic example of the potential problems: "He was a professor of philosophy,
and thinking was his life -- thinking and reading and writing and teaching." (p. 30)
It did not leave him in very close contact with life as it is lived by regular people.
About the only advice we see him give is advising his son (during Hanna's trial)
to do nothing. Preaching non-action is perhaps what we should expect from a
professional philosopher. Schlink, himself a product of German academia, is
partial to the reflective life. "You
can't remember things that really played a major
role in your life without contemplation and reflection." One problem with a
compulsive need to think and examine, is that the results will vary wildly with the
quality of your equipment. Michael, at an age when hormones ought to count for
more than syllogisms, finds himself thinking about sin and its penalties: "lf looking
at someone with desire was as bad as satisfying the desire, if having an active
fantasy was as bad as the act you were fantasizing -- then why not the
satisfaction and the act itself?" (p 19) Thought is made equivalent to reality; it's
an equation that is not invariably appropriate. When Michael visits the
concentration camp, he again compulsively examines his actions and feelings.
He feels awkward trying to find something as mundane as a restaurant after the
psychological impact of the camp. On reflection, however, he decides that "my
awkwardness was not the result of real feeling, but of thinking about the way one
is supposed to feel." (p. 155) There is a strong suspicion that this may well be a
useful capsule description of how Michael approaches life in general.
Does the author play fair?
The author exercises his prerogative to heighten experience, even when the
experience is artificial to begin with. Schlink is a novelist, not a historian, and the
need artfully to order experience often takes precedence over creating a sense of
verisimilitude. "ln
a way I always live with stories. I'm always thinking in stories,
and play with stories. lt's a way of taking the world in." The author creates and
controls the events that convey the story. In a normal long-term relationship, we
would expect an age mismatch to be gradually accommodated, to have a dayto-
day continuity that begins to feel natural. lnstead, Schlink manages to make the
age difference dramatically prominent by having Hanna locked up for eighteen
years. The reunited lovers are no longer the people they were; Michael "sat next
to Hanna and smelled an old woman." (p. 197) An even clearer example of the
author's choosing the shape that events will take is found in the section where
Michael is talking to the survivor of Hanna's concentration camp. The woman --
repeatedly referred to simply as "the daughter" -- has an uncanny understanding
of the negative impact Hanna has had on Michael: "the marriage was short and
unhappy and you never married again, and the child, if there is one, is in
boarding school." (p.213) lt is an almost eerily impressive assessment from a
near-stranger -- at least it is impressive until you remember that "the daughter" is
merely parroting the words that the author has given her. Schlink does what he
thinks will put his message across. We can't really complain of his not playing
fair; after all, we're playing by his rules.
Did Michael betray Hanna?
10
Michael tormented himself with a sense of guilt -- that it was not necessarily
justified
was irrelevant. He and Hanna had come passionately together in one of
the brief periods
of their respective lives in which the relationship could be
expected to prosper.
He ignores the obvious mathematics of the situation, that
the ratio is flawed, that 15 is not to 36 as 3g is to 60. Time not only brings a
different set of characters (albeit with the same names) to face each other, but a
different set of truths to apply to themselves. So much is revealed about Hanna,
and the revelations would easily explain a sense of revulsion. What Michael
wants to establish is that he turned his back on Hanna before he had any good
reason to, and that this rejection is both grave and culpable. Even the rejection is
more perception
than reality; the crime to which Michael pleads guilty is
"disavowal,"
an amorphous crime that can "pull the underpinnings away from a
relationship just
as surely as other more flamboyant types of betrayal)' (p. T4)
While people might generally be expected to feel that it is only good sense to
hide the odd and illicit relationship from family and schoolmates, Michael winds
up feeling that not acknowledging Hanna is not prudence,
but betrayal. We have
come almost to the end of the book before we see Michael asking the basic
question: "did I not have my own accounting to demand of her? What about me?"
(p.201) lt is a belated sensibility that never really dominates his psyche.
Michael
seems determined to suffer, and if he has to twist his facts into the right position,
that is something that he can do: "the
fact that I had not driven her away did not
change the fact that I had betrayed her. And if I was not guilty because one
cannot be guilty of betraying a criminal, then I was guilty of having loved a
criminal." (p. 134)
ls Michael the last of a series?
lf you think of Hanna as a predator,
then you can think of Michael as the last of a
series. There was testimony at her trial to the effect that "she had favorites,
always one of the young
ones who was weak and dericate." (p. 1 16) The
prisoners
at the camp had their obvious suspicions about why Hanna was
selecting her pets,
but all that anyone learned for certain was that she had them
read to her, and that eventually she sent them away on the transports to their
deaths. Michael thought of a defense for her actions, one that did not make her a
predator: "Say you wanted to make their last month bearable. That that was the
reason for choosing the delicate and the weak." (p. 1 17) lt might be true,
although the words were only Michael's imagining. On the other hand, Hanna's
selection of Michael can be made to fit the predatory pattern
with very little
adjustment. When they met, Michael was young
enough to be vulnerable, and on
top of that, he was sick with hepatitis. He vomits in the street, and Hanna comes
to his assistance in a way that was "almost an assault." (p. 4) The glimpses
of
her body that she allows him become the vehicle of his seduction. Eventually, at
a time of her own choosing, Hanna abandons a still-ardent Michael. lf you harbor
suspicions about Hanna, the parallels
between her life as a concentration camp
guard and her life as a lover are chilling.
11
Are the sex roles reversed?
Dramatically. Michael spends a fair amount of time telling himself that his
relationship with Hanna has made him much more comfortable and secure than
his peers in dealing with young women of his own age. While that may be
somewhat true, it does not mean that the relationship with Hanna follows a
standard model. When Michael works himself up to the point of going to see
Hanna (after the initial, accidental meeting), he finds she is not in her apartment.
Waiting, he "heard slow, heavy, regular footsteps coming up the stairs. I hoped
that whoever he was, he lived on the second floor. lf he saw me -- how would I
explain . . ." (p. 22)The footsteps belong to Hanna, but the misapplication of the
personal pronoun turns out to be more prescient than Michael suspected. Hanna
is the dominant partner; she defines the area within which the relationship
unfolds. Michael's role is accommodation, learning what needs to be done to
maintain the relationship and acting accordingly. lf apologies are needed,
Michael will make them. The age difference allows Hanna to figure appropriately
as the partner with experience, the initiator and guide. Michael, young and
inexperienced, inevitably inherits the role of the dominated partner. Hanna even
appears, on occasion, as a violent abuser. lf we retain any confusion about the
roles, Schlink makes things crystal clear by a description of the couple's first
sexual pairing: "she was on top of me, looking into my eyes until I came and
closed my eyes tight and tried to control myself and then screamed so loud that
she had to cover my mouth with her hand to smother the sound." (p. 25-26) In
context, it makes perfect sense, but it is not behavior that follows sexual
stereotypes.
For Further Reading
A. Manette Ansay, Sisfer
Louis Begley, Wartime Lies
Joseph von Eichendorff, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
FranzKafka, The Trial
Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Lisf
Thomas Mann. Confessions of Felix Krull
Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient;
Andre Schwartz-Bart, The Last of the Just
William Styron, Sophie's Choice
Sherri Szeman The Kommandant's Misfress
D. M. Thomas, The White Hotel
t2
Dramatically. Michael spends a fair amount of time telling himself that his
relationship with Hanna has made him much more comfortable and secure than
his peers in dealing with young women of his own age. While that may be
somewhat true, it does not mean that the relationship with Hanna follows a
standard model. When Michael works himself up to the point of going to see
Hanna (after the initial, accidental meeting), he finds she is not in her apartment.
Waiting, he "heard slow, heavy, regular footsteps coming up the stairs. I hoped
that whoever he was, he lived on the second floor. lf he saw me -- how would I
explain . . ." (p. 22)The footsteps belong to Hanna, but the misapplication of the
personal pronoun turns out to be more prescient than Michael suspected. Hanna
is the dominant partner; she defines the area within which the relationship
unfolds. Michael's role is accommodation, learning what needs to be done to
maintain the relationship and acting accordingly. lf apologies are needed,
Michael will make them. The age difference allows Hanna to figure appropriately
as the partner with experience, the initiator and guide. Michael, young and
inexperienced, inevitably inherits the role of the dominated partner. Hanna even
appears, on occasion, as a violent abuser. lf we retain any confusion about the
roles, Schlink makes things crystal clear by a description of the couple's first
sexual pairing: "she was on top of me, looking into my eyes until I came and
closed my eyes tight and tried to control myself and then screamed so loud that
she had to cover my mouth with her hand to smother the sound." (p. 25-26) ln
context, it makes perfect sense, but it is not behavior that follows sexual
stereotypes.
For Further Reading
A. Manette Ansay, Sisfer
Louis Begley, Wartime Lies
Joseph von Eichendorff, Memoirs of a Good-for-Nothing
Gustave Flaubert, Sentimental Education
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
FranzKafka, The Trial
Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Lisf
Thomas Mann, Confessions of Felix Krull
Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient;
Andre Schwartz-Bart, The Last of the Just
William Styron, Sophie's Choice
Sherri Szeman The Kommandant's Misfress
D. M. Thomas, The White Hotel
t2