The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

• Born: July 6, 1944
• Birthplace: Bielefeld, Germany

First published:Der Vorleser, 1995 (English translation, 1997)

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Historical

Time of plot: 1958–83

Locale: West Germany

Principal Characters

Michael Berg, a young German man who narrates the story

Hanna Schmitz, his sometime lover, a German streetcar conductor and former SS guard

Michael’s father, a philosophy professor

Sophie, one of his schoolmates

Gertrud Berg, his wife

Presiding judge, the judge at Hanna’s trial

Female Holocaust survivor, a concentration camp inmate who writes a book about her experiences and who testifies at Hanna’s trial

The Story

Fifteen-year-old high school student Michael Berg meets Hanna Schmitz when he becomes sick near her apartment and she comes to his aid. Suffering from hepatitis, Michael misses several months of school. After he has largely recovered, he visits Hanna to thank her for her kindness. Seeing her partially nude while she is changing clothes, he becomes sexually attracted to her. Shortly thereafter, they begin a romantic relationship, although at thirty-six, she is more than twice his age. Hanna is a streetcar conductor, and Michael begins to visit her regularly after her work shifts. When Michael returns to school, Hanna asks him to read to her from the books he is studying; she seems to be enthralled by these readings. Their time together becomes a regular pattern of his reading to her each evening before they have sex. Throughout, Hanna is very reluctant to discuss her past.

On Easter vacation, they take a bicycle tour and room together. One day he rises early and leaves a note saying he has gone to get breakfast. When he comes back, Hanna is furious with him and strikes him across the face, claiming she never saw the note. As their liaison continues, Michael feels he is betraying Hanna because he has told no one else about her, nor does he tell her about his friends and his life apart from her. He becomes interested in a girl his age, Sophie, but is unable to let a real relationship develop.

One afternoon Michael sees Hanna near a pool where he is swimming with his friends. He does not acknowledge her. The next day he discovers that she has moved out of her apartment. He searches everywhere but is unable to find her. Stunned by the sudden end of the relationship, Michael wonders if he angered Hanna by failing to greet her at the pool. He suffers for some time but eventually manages to forget Hanna as he finishes high school and starts his university studies.

In his later years at the university, Michael enrolls in a seminar focused on the trial of several former concentration camp guards. He is unaware that Hanna is one of defendants until he sees her in the courtroom. He remains numb and cannot retrieve any feelings for her; she does not acknowledge that she has recognized him. The trial causes Michael to reflect deeply on the role of the German people during the war. He contemplates the way that those who took part in the Nazi atrocities as well as those who failed to act in opposition continue to experience guilt and shame.

The defendants had been guards in a small camp in Poland. Moving the prisoners to a different camp after an air raid, they stopped one night to rest in a church. Several hundred female prisoners were locked in; almost all died when the church was hit by Allied bombs. The guards did nothing to save the prisoners. During the trial, Hanna seems detached and indifferent to her fate, and her own statements seem to hurt her case.

One of the witnesses in the trial is a former prisoner who, along with her mother, managed to survive the church fire. She testifies that in the camp, Hanna often selected frail young women from among the prisoners and arranged special treatment for them. At night, these women would visit her quarters. Others suspected that Hanna was sexually exploiting these prisoners, but this witness confirms that the women simply read to Hanna each evening.

The other defendants accuse Hanna of writing a self-serving report about the church bombing, but she denies this. When a prosecutor suggests comparing her handwriting to the report, Hanna admits she was the author.

Michael suddenly realizes that Hanna must be illiterate. This would explain many things—her love of having someone read to her, her anger over the note during the Easter trip, and her reluctance to undergo handwriting analysis. Michael considers reporting this to the presiding judge. Without explaining any personal involvement in the case, he asks his father’s advice but finds their exchange awkward and inadequate. Eventually, he visits the judge but never reveals Hanna’s illiteracy. Hanna and her codefendants are all convicted, and Hanna is sentenced to life imprisonment.

After the trial, Michael becomes a clerk for a judge. He meets a fellow law clerk named Gertrud and marries her when she becomes pregnant, but they divorce five years later. Michael eventually resumes reading to Hanna by taping himself reading full books and sending these tapes to her in prison. Four years later, Hanna begins to respond with brief notes, and Michael realizes that she has learned to write.

When Hanna is about to be paroled after eighteen years in prison, the warden writes to Michael, asking if he might help when she is freed. Michael agrees and pays her a preliminary visit. He is shocked to find her looking and smelling like an old woman but follows through on his plan to help by locating an apartment and getting her a job. The morning he is to pick her up, Hanna commits suicide.

The warden tells Michael about how Hanna learned to read by following along in library books as she listened to Michael’s recorded tapes. Hanna has left some money and a letter with a request that Michael give the money to the woman who had survived the church fire and testified at the trial. A few months after Hanna’s death, Michael contacts this woman in New York City, but she refuses to accept the money because that might seem to grant absolution to Hanna, which she cannot do. They decide that Michael should give the money to a Jewish charity combating illiteracy. When Michael receives a letter acknowledging this gift, he takes the letter to Hanna’s grave and visits there for the first and only time.

Bibliography

MacKinnon, John E. "Law and Tenderness in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader." Law and Literature 16.2 (2004): 179–201. Print.

McGlothlin, Erin. "Theorizing the Perpetrator in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Martin Amis’s Time’s Arrow." After Representation? The Holocaust, Literature, and Culture. Ed. R. Clifton Spargo and Robert Ehrenreich. Rutgers: Rutgers UP, 2009. 210–30. Print.

Roth, Jeffrey I. "Reading and Misreading The Reader." Law and Literature 16.2 (2004): 163–77. Print.

Scherr, Arthur. "A Hidden Heidegger in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader?." Midwest Quarterly 54.3 (2013): 244–62. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 20 Aug. 2014. <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=lfh&AN=87745320&site=lrc-live>

Worthington, Kim. "Suturing the Wound: Derrida’s ‘On Forgiveness’ and Schlink’s The Reader." Comparative Literature 63.2 (2011): 203–24. Print.