The Reader (1998) (edit title/settings)

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Summary edit see section history

Characters edit see section history

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• Hanna Schmitz: An older woman who has a relationship with Michael.Hanna goes through life trying to hide her illiteracy. She makes life altering decisions based on this inability. The energy she puts into trying to hide her illiteracy could've easily been directed at learning to read.
• Michael Berg: the narrator and protagonist..
• Mr. Berg: Michael's father who is a professor of philosophy and an authorHe is a detached, cold man. He sees his children by appointment. He's a logical man but he does not have a good relationship with his children.
• Mrs. Berg: Michael's mother who only figures briefly in the novel.We see her briefly during Michael's illness. She makes her son visit Hannato thank her for her help. She also appears to care about her children. She worries when Michael is late.
• Michael Berg: A young man coming of age in post-WWII Germany comes to grips with the legacy of a woman twice his age who had been his lover.Michael undergoes a change after his affair with Hanna. He's motivated to do better in school. He's more confidant with his friends and with adults. Later, he's aloof and arrogant and is unable to sustain a healthy relationship.
• Gertrud: Michael's wife. They divorce after 5 years of marriage and lead separate lives.
• Julia: Michael's daughter.

Quotes edit see section history

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• “I...I mean...what would you have done.”

  Hanna

• “Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?”

  Narrator

• “But I think that it is true and thus the question of whether or not it is sad or happy has no meaning whatsoever.”

  Michael

• “"With the letter in my pocket, I drove to the cemetery,to Hanna's grave. It was the first and only time i stood there."”

• “These are hours without sleep, which is not to say that they're sleepless, because on the contrary, they're not about lack of anything, they're rich and full. Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again.”

• “Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept.”

• “When we open ourselves you yourself to me and I myself to you, when we submerge you into me and I into you when we vanish into me you and into you I Then I am me and you are you.”

• “What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? We should not believe we can comprehend the incomprehensible, we may not compare the incomparable, we may not inquire because to inquire is to make the horros an object of discussion, even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame and guilt? To what purpose?”

• “I felt a great emptiness inside, as if I had been searching for some glimpse, not outside but within myself, and had discovered that there was nothing to be found.”

• “I had the feeling that what we were denying her was not only her wish, but her right. We had cheated her of her rights by getting divorced, and the fact that we did it together didn't halve the guilt.”

• “It is not true... that one can merely observe the richness of life in the past, whereas one can participate in the present. Doing history means building bridges between the pst and the present, observing both banks of the river, taking an active part on both sides.”

• “I knew about the helplessness in everyday activities, finding one's way or finding an address or choosing a meal in a restaurant, about how illiterates anxiously stick to prescribed patterns and familiar routines, about how much energy it takes to conceal one's ability to read and write, energy lost to actual living. Illiteracy is dependence. By finding the courage to learn to read and write, Hanna had advanced from dependence to independence, a step towards liberation.”

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• There’s no need to talk, because the truth of what one says lies in what one does.

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• The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive.

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• “But with adults I see absolutely no justification for setting other people’s views of what is good for them above their own ideas of what is good for themselves.”

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• But behavior does not merely enact whatever has already been thought through and decided. It has its own sources, and is my behavior, quite independently, just as my thoughts are my thoughts, and my decisions my decisions.

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• But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible.

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• I thought that if the right time gets missed, if one has refused or been refused something for too long, it’s too late, even if it is finally tackled with energy and received with joy. Or is there no such thing as “too late”? Is there only “late,” and is “late” always better than “never”? I don’t know.

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• Why? Why does what was beautiful suddenly shatter in hindsight because it concealed dark truths? Why does the memory of years of happy marriage turn to gall when our partner is revealed to have had a lover all those years? Because such a situation makes it impossible to be happy? But we were happy! Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily. Because happiness is only real if it lasts forever? Because things always end painfully if they contained pain, conscious or unconscious, all along? But what is unconscious, unrecognized pain?

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• Is this what sadness is all about? Is it what comes over us when beautiful memories shatter in hindsight because the remembered happiness fed not just on actual circumstances but on a promise that was not kept?

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• They’re a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.”

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• chimera, I began playing with a different image of the course of legal history. In this one it still has a purpose, but the goal it finally attains, after countless disruptions, confusions, and delusions, is the beginning, its own original starting point, which once reached must be set off from again.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Auschwitz
• New York

First Sentence edit see section history

Themes & Symbolism edit see section history

• literacy: Describe this theme.

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Bernhard Schlink (Author)

Other Contributors:

1. Carol Janeway (Translator) - English
2. Campbell Scott (Narrator)
3. Susan Baumgartner (Translator)
4. Andreja Blažič Klemenc (Translator)
5. Fátima Freire De Andrade (Translator)

First Edition edit see section history

Awards edit see section history

• International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award (Finalist, 1999, Shortlist)
• Exclusive Books Boeke Prize (1999)

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 833.914

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Add a note to help parents select a book for a child.

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Contemporary
• Books › Romance › Historical

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Point of Dew: A description of the book's main metaphor and similar movies that underline this theme.

Movie Connections edit see section history

• The Reader (IMDb): 2008

More Books Like This edit see section history