The third part opens up with Michael having a short-lived unhappy marriage. It is compounded by the fact that his generation had to engage with the Nazi past, and contemplate their place in it. His relationship with Hanna, and his inability to understand her, plagues Michaels’s adulthood.
The purpose of the reader by bernhard schlink trial#
Moreover, Hanna, ashamed to accept her illiteracy, offers a very weak defence at the trial and hence, is sentenced indiscriminately. He discovers that it was Hanna’s illiteracy that had governed his association with her. At the trial, he sees Hanna again as one of the accused. Michael becomes a part of a seminar group and attends a trial related to concentration camps while in college. The second part delves into a far deeper and philosophical side of the novel. The association of the two snaps as Hanna moves away rather suddenly and unexpectedly leaving Michael in limbo about their bond. The two indulge in bathing, making love, and reading as a daily ritual. This visit turns out to be the beginning of a long summer engagement between the two. After having recovered, he visits her out of gratitude for having helped him.
Michael falls sick in the street one day and is helped by Hanna. The first part unpacks a very intense adolescent love affair between 15 years old Michael Berg and the adult protagonist Hanna. The entire novel is divided into three parts. The Reader comes out to be a reflection of post-holocaust times in Germany during the ‘60s. He also published several works of literature, including ‘The Reader’, which is a painful legacy that has marred the conscience of the German nation ever since the horrors of the holocaust became public knowledge. He served as a professor of public law and the philosophy of law at Humboldt University and judge on the Constitutional court of federal state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Bernhard Schlink grew up in a post-war Germany, where generational divide and accommodation were at the heart of his generation’s association with the Nazi past. In this context, ‘The Reader’ by Bernhard Schlink comes as a unique read as it moves beyond the obvious and seeks to inquire of metaphysical guilt. Innumerable laws, statutes, and works of literature ranging from philosophical to analytical have dealt with them. Socio-legal apparatus has long dealt with the questions surrounding those guilty of transgressing the boundaries set by society. “ Where all are guilty, no one is confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing” – Hannah Arendt
This book review has been authored by Ishant Kumar Sharma, a student of Rajiv Gandhi National University of Law, Punjab.
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