Maya's Second Reaction

In part two, the reader finds out that Hanna was illiterate. At first, I thought she had hidden the note Michael left for her on their vacation somewhere or purposefully said she did not know about it in order to manipulate him. However, I guess it was that she actually could not understand it. Either way, the intensity of her reaction wasn’t really precedented. This is especially because she obviously did not care as much about the relationship as Michael did. This new information, though, changed my perspective about their dynamic. Hanna is always portrayed as the more mature one; she is more mature sexually, emotionally (to a degree), and physically. But, in a way, Michael takes on this sort of “parental role”. Children are usually the ones who ask the parents to read out loud to them. In this case, Michael comes off as the more mature one. 

Part two as well also presented an interesting point. Michael, around chapter two, speaks of how after the end of the World War II in 1945, anyone involved in literally anything affiliated with the Third Reich was meant to feel ashamed by their friends and family. When Michael mentions that his father was fired for teaching Spinoza, a philosopher who grew up in a Portuguese/Jewish portion of Amsterdam, he says he is unsure as to whether his father even deserved the shame of forfeiting his job. He made this point that people still shamed others “even if the only charge [someone] could bring was that [they] had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst”. This was interesting to me because it shows a diffusion of responsibility. The statement that Michael made shows that everyone who wasn’t involved wanted to rid themselves of the evil image their country had earned in the eyes of others. But, it also makes the reader think, "Should Michael's father have stood up to those opposing him teaching the philosophies of someone with Jewish heritage or was he right to just walk away in order to protect his family?"