reaction part 3

Part three was the climatic end to The Reader.  Hanna and Michael finally reconnect after all these years, and Hanna learns to read (congratulations).  I was kind of confused about Hanna, I never really felt like I understood Hanna.  She is always bouncing around from being the best thing that happened to Michael, to the worst thing that tore apart all his other relationships and tormented him throughout his life.  I was ok with her suicide.  No sense in keeping someone around who clearly doesn’t want to be alive anymore.  She left her money to a Jewish charity, and made peace with herself.  In her old age, I doubt there would be anything significant she could accomplish anyway.  It’s not like suffering around for the last few years would have changed a bunch of people lives and made the world a better place.  She couldn’t be with Michael, because he was no longer attracted to her physically, and she didn’t have the strength to make a difference in the Jewish community.  I feel that her choice was understandable and tolerable.  This was probably better for Michael as well, because now he is released from her grip, and can focus more on raising his daughter and being a part of her life instead of Hanna’s.  With Hanna’s death comes the ability for Michael to move on and focus more on others, rather than always thinking of her and worrying about trying to reconnect in some way.        

reaction part 2

             In part two, we learn more about Hanna, and why she acts funny around books, and especially notes.  We learn that Hanna is an illiterate Nazi, and she chose her job because she didn’t want to reveal the fact that she was illiterate.  To me, this seems more a move of cowardice than anything else.  Rather than face her worst nightmare, which is easily fixed by learning how to read, she chooses to join up with the worst group of people ever.  She seems, from eyewitness accounts, to have a fascination and sort of love for the sick/weak children in the camp who are soon to be killed.  I attribute this to the reason she took interest in Michael.  She has some sort of love for those who are lesser in some way, and found Michael at a time when he was very weak.  From the story it was very hard to tell whether she was truly preying on the children, or attempting to comfort them before their eventual death.  I think this part was left blurry for a reason.  The eyewitnesses seem to think she was evil, and preyed on the weak for personal enjoyment, while Michael has a totally different view of Hanna within his memories, but memories tend to be much more positive and happy than reality, (positivity effect).  His clear mixed emotions about Hanna’s sentence lead me to believe that his experience with Hanna was both uplifting and traumatizing.  I think his happy memories are covering the truth of what happened between the two of them.  I feel that his guilt for loving Hanna is more about her past, which was unknown to him at the time.  If he knew that she was a Nazi guard that let a bunch of women and children burn to death in a church, he would have thought twice before going back to her house the second time.     

Part 1 Reaction

            The relationship between Hanna and Michael is strange, not only because of the huge age difference, but also due to the bi-polar tendencies that Hanna has.  I think this relationship was spawned more from her manipulation over him, when he was in a weaker and lonelier state than ever.  His sickness caused him to be isolated from his friends, family, and left him to his own devices in a bed for months.  This lack of interaction caused him to be a little more careless when it comes to relationships.  He was desperate to connect with someone, and she was more than willing to be that person and fill the void in his heart.  She is a strange person, and I don’t trust her one bit.  When he leaves a note for her one afternoon, upon his return she smacks him in the face with a belt, drawing blood.  I don’t know about you, but that is totally crazy and more than 100% percent unwarranted.  Michael’s psychological dependence on her draws him back to her, no matter how horribly she treats him.  His love for her seems to become more of a physical need that he has to cope with.  I think his life would have been, more normal if he had never met Hanna in the first place.  Then there are times when she is very kind and provides Michael with a sense of new found confidence, which never hurts in life.  She leaves Michael torn between his love for her kind side, but worry that he was manipulated into loving her.  He is left feeling guilty for loving her, and I think that is exactly why she is not the nicest person and is kind of a creepy weirdo.       

Ciara's Third Reaction

Though I had seen the movie a few years back, reading the book truly was a different experience, and one I enjoyed thoroughly.  I knew the storyline of the plot, but the third person experience that people are forced to experience while watching a movie often prevents them from really feeling and understanding the characters on a personal level.  The access that Schlink gifts the reader into the nuances of the dynamic characters led to my appreciation for the work of beauty that is The Reader.  Unlike most, I was not as surprised to find out that Hanna committed suicide.  We knew from the beginning of the novel that Hanna was a woman of pride; if she believed that an act of her or even Michael could tarnish her pride, she negated it immediately. Not only was she racked with guilt over her involvement with the death of the people within the church; she knew that when she got out, she would have to depend on Michael to aid her transition into the real world.  In the early days of their relationship, Hanna always wanted to be in control.  When she couldn’t, she would throw a tantrum until Michael apologized, which she always knew he would.  When she left him, it would be easy to assume that she did it so that Michael would be able to have a normal youth, but I also believe it was because she saw herself getting too attached to Michael.  For her to depend on him to survive would have taken a huge toll on her pride.  I also believe that she truly did not believe that she was worth the effort based on her actions and morals, and that her existence would have been a waste of space and an inconvenience; an unwanted burden.  She had nothing and no one to live for, so based on her character, her choice did not come as a surprise to me. I appreciated the ending; I believe the character traits attributed to each character stayed true from start to finish.

Kaylee's Reaction to Part 3

            After finishing part three of The Reader, I can say that it is my favorite book we read this year. Bernhard Schlink creates a beautiful yet disturbing story of an unexpected relationship, while simultaneously providing a boarder image of post war Germany. Michael and Hanna are both complex characters that affect each other immensely throughout the book. Although completely strange, I liked reading of Michael experience of his first romance and his transition into manhood. It tragic that a person’s first love may haunt them for the rest of there life, however it is something that is apart of life I guess. Seeing Gertrud in constant comparison with Hanna made me sad. Michael’s self-proclaimed numbness was just a way to block Hanna’s memories out of his mind, but in the end they could never escape him. Another thing that was Michael was unable to escape was the guilt he felt for being in love with Hanna, the criminal. Almost mid-way through part three, Michael finds reconnection with Hanna through literature and a tape recorder. I think that this was a way for Michael to find peace with Hanna, while revisiting his youth. One thing I found weird, that was later asked by the warden, was why Michael had never written any letters to her. However, it’s really isn’t weird at all because their relationship was based on pure physicality. Through all his memories of Hanna, they are of her body, her smell, her feeling and her actions around him. Their relationship did not hold any bond mentally. And that’s why she did not leave him anything behind either (not even a thank you for spending hundreds of hours reading to her while she was locked up, b*tch). I liked how the book ended because Michael and Hanna were not meant to end up together. They had their time, things changed, and although Michael was ultimately hopeful, Hanna’s death freed him from further expectation and suffering.  

Alex's Reaction to Part 3

     On several occasions throughout part 3 Michael admits to himself that he although he is not responsible for loving his parents, who seemed to have played a role with the Nazi’s, he is in fact responsible for loving Hanna- a direct criminal branching from the Nazi regime. The guilt he feels stems from the idea that he had become ignorant, blinded by love, and therefore had become a criminal himself. Guilt quickly turns into regret when Michael almost wishes he had lived with his generation instead of advancing to Hanna’s. Throughout part 3 we learn that Michael was married, had a child and divorced. He initially kept Hanna a secret to the women he met. It is almost as if he wanted to keep Hanna a secret from himself, denying that the relationship ever happened. He found that later on when he became more open about his past to women, he was unsuccessful, and stopped. 

     Michael is caught between forgetting and wanting to return to his past with Hanna. Although he seeks to avoid the thought of her, when it is awakened, he simply cannot escape it. Michael starts seeking other ways to escape by running away from the responsibility of accepting life. He feels “branded” by his past and feels unable to arrive somewhere in life because Hanna predominated even when she was “out of his life”. 

     Literature, again, connects the two as Michael starts sending Hanna tapes of himself reading. Four years later he hears back from Hanna, who still refers to him as “kid”, even though he is clearly not anymore. We learn that Hanna has had no other contact with the outside world besides Michael for 18 years, therefore Michael is responsible for situating her back into society. He, however, puts off the confrontation with Hanna until the week she is released. It is almost as if he wants her to remain unattainable, but what else could be holding him back? 

     Hanna is no longer the mirage in the desert that he had been thinking about for over 18 years. She had aged and lost her “smell”. The 18 spent in jail held her back mentally while Michael was moving forward in life, however the memory of Hanna always found ways of holding him back. 

The mentioning of Hanna’s suicide is shockingly direct. As the book comes to a close Michael mentions that he is still haunted by the guilt he feels from denial and betrayal, but enraged by her suicide, which he feels she did to spite him. 

I loved The Reader. This is definitely my favorite book I have read this year. 

Sharon's 3rd Post

All in all, I enjoyed reading “The Reader” immensely. In Part I, I was not too sure what direction the book was headed, but the introduction of topics such as post-Holocaust feelings, ethical dilemmas and Hanna’s illiteracy made for an extremely compelling read. That being said, I did not expect Hanna’s suicide in Part III at all; it had seemed to me that she was finally beginning to embrace her secret by attempting to learn to read, and thus had no reason for wanting to end her life. I understand how the guilt must have overwhelmed her; it is one thing to send off people to their deaths, but another to hear about the experience from their own perspectives. Yet it puzzles me why she did it right after being released after waiting for so long in prison. In fact, the warden mentioned Hanna, at one point, suddenly completely disregarded her appearances and interactions with other women, yet it was not to be seen as giving up, but rather redefining herself -I began to think she had persevered through the knowledge with the toughness she’d always displayed. This detail also struck me as touching upon the idea of change; for years, it seemed that Michael had lived in the past because everything he did went back to his relationship with Hanna. He even notes how her voice is still young despite her physical appearance. For this reason, I think Part III was the one I found to be most interesting –besides elaborating upon the surprising intensity of the novel’s title, it also created a sort of balance at the end, or an “at peace” moment.