The Reader (Bernhard Schlink)

In the novel The Reader, author Bernhard Schlink explores the issue of German guilt for the Holocaust and how that guilt affects subsequent generations who ask who is responsible, who participate in the guilt even though they were not there, and who in effect inherit the guilt from their parents. This is true for the protagonist, who inherits this collective guilt even though his parents were not Nazis and did not participate themselves. Michael Berg is the young man who wrestles with issues of guilt and moral meaning, and he does so in a way that suggests that we can never answer these questions fully and that the interconnections among people and among elements in their lives make it difficult to give clear and certain answers. At some level, Michael simply has to accept that certain things just are, and this includes his own uncertainty.

Part of Michael's guilt is the fact that he loved Hanna and yet knew so little about her. This gives him guilt in two ways. On the one hand, he feels guilty for loving someone who could commit such horrible crimes, and on the other, he feels he has failed her in some way and could have provided comfort or helped her cope with her own guilt and fear. This story is told as a memory, and so the older man is wrestling with all the guilt and meaning his experience has created in him: "Why does it make me so sad when I think back to that time?" (37). He remembers specific moments and agonizes over their meaning. His sense of having f

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