A lot of passages within The Reader remind me of the Calvino stories. The writing is predominantly concerned with the main character’s inner thoughts pertaining to whatever is happening in that moment. This then slows the pace of the plot down because the reader gets a very detailed look “inside” of the characters head. These “Calvino” moments are when Michael describes the mental pictures of Hanna that he still remembers vividly and can “replay”. He describes every detail and exactly what he felt while it was happening. I think Michael has developed this ability to replay all these images because of his being bedridden. When he was first describing to the reader what it felt like to be so horribly ill that getting up wasn’t even an option, he tells the reader that he kept himself entertained by letting his imagination make things such as monsters and other fictional things from the books he had read come to life within his room. Like he said, his illness had deprived him of all his physical senses so his “internal” senses became heightened. Being able to replay and create scenes based on what he had read probably gave him this ability to store these memories and relive them with such clarity.
Honestly, the relationship between Hanna and Michael is disturbing to me. Besides the fact that there’s a twenty year difference between the two of them, their interactions are “bipolar”. The quickness that it switches from happy scenes of them being loving with each other to Hanna basically manipulating Michael into submission is weird to say the least. It was strange to me that Michael stayed the whole way through even though one of their fights involved her drawing blood from him. I find it strange because he mentioned that sort of relationship didn’t exist in his family so I can’t imagine him thinking that was normal.
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