Table of Contents
Reading Group Guide
1. At what point does the significance of the book's title become clear to you? Who is "The Reader"? Are there others in the story with an equally compelling claim to this role?
2. When does the difference in social class between Hanna and Michael become most clear and painful? Why does Hanna feel uncomfortable staying overnight in Michael's house? Is Hanna angry about her lack of education?
3. Why is the sense of smell so important in this story? What is it about Hanna that so strongly provokes the boy's desire? If Hanna represents "an invitation to forget the world in the recesses of the body" [p. 16], why is she the only woman Michael seems able to love?
4. One reviewer has pointed out that "learning that the love of your life used to be a concentration camp guard is not part of the American baby-boomer experience." [Suzanna Ruta, The New York Times Book Review, July 27, 1997: 8] Is The Reader's central theme--love and betrayal between generations--particular to Germany, given the uniqueness of German history? Is there anything roughly parallel to it in the American experience?
5. In a novel so suffused with guilt, how is Michael guilty? Does his narrative serve as a
way of putting himself on trial? What verdict does he reach? Is he asking readers to examine the evidence he presents and to condemn him or exonerate him? Or has he already condemned himself?
6. When Michael consults his father about Hanna's trial, does his father give him good advice? Why does Michael not act upon this advice? Is the father deserving of the son's scorn and disappointment? Is Michael's love for Hanna meant, in part, to be an allegory for his generation'simplication in their parents' guilt?
7. Do you agree with Michael's judgment that Hanna was sympathetic with the prisoners she chose to read to her, and that she wanted their final month of life to be bearable? Or do you see Hanna in a darker light: do the testimonies about her cruelty and sadism ring true?
8. Asked to explain why she didn't let the women out of the burning church, Hanna remembers being urgently concerned with the need to keep order. What is missing in her reasoning process? Are you surprised at her responses to the judge's attempt to prompt her into offering self-defense as an excuse?
9. Why does Hanna twice ask the judge, "what would you have done?" Is the judge sympathetic toward Hanna? What is she trying to communicate in the moment when she turns and looks directly at him?
10. Why does Michael visit the concentration camp at Struthof? What is he seeking? What does he find instead?
11. Michael comments that Enlightenment law (the foundation of the American legal system as well as the German one) was "based on the belief that a good order is intrinsic to the world" [p. 181]. How does his experience with Hanna's trial influence Michael's view of history and of law?
12. What do you think of Michael's decision to send Hanna the tapes? He notices that the books he has chosen to read aloud "testify to a great and fundamental confidence in bourgeois culture" [p. 185]. Does the story of Hanna belie this faith? Would familiarity with the literature she later reads have made any difference in her willingness to collaborate in Hitler's regime?
13. One might argue that Hanna didn't willfully collaborate with Hitler's genocide and that her decisions were driven only by a desire to hide her secret. Does this view exonerate Hanna in any way? Are there any mitigating circumstances in her case? How would you have argued for her, if you were a lawyer working in her defense?
14. Do you agree with the judgment of the concentration camp survivor to whom Michael delivers Hanna's money at the end of the novel? Why does she accept the tea tin, but not the money? Who knew Hanna better--Michael or this woman? Has Michael been deluded by his love? Is he another of Hanna's victims?
15. Why does Hanna do what she does at the end of the novel? Does her admission that the dead "came every night, whether I wanted them or not" [pp. 198-99] imply that she suffered for her crimes? Is complicity in the crimes of the Holocaust an unforgivable sin?
16. How does this novel leave you feeling and thinking? Is it hopeful or ultimately despairing? If you have read other Holocaust literature, how does The Reader compare?
Read a Sample Chapter
Chapter One
When I was fifteen, I got hepatitis. It started in the fall and lasted
until spring. As the old year darkened and turned colder, I got weaker
and weaker. Things didn't start to improve until the new year. January
was warm, and my mother moved my bed out onto the balcony. I saw sky,
sun, clouds, and heard the voices of children playing in the
courtyard. As dusk came one evening in February, there was the sound
of a blackbird singing.
The first time I ventured outside, it was to go from Blumenstrasse,
where we lived on the second floor of a massive turn-of-the-century
building, to Bahnhofstrasse. That's where I'd thrown up on the way
home from school one day the previous October. I'd been feeling weak
for days, in a way that was completely new to me. Every step was an
effort. When I was faced with stairs either at home or at school, my
legs would hardly carry me. I had no appetite. Even if I sat down at
the table hungry, I soon felt queasy. I woke up every morning with a
dry mouth and the sensation that my insides were in the wrong place
and too heavy for my body. I was ashamed of being so weak. I was even
more ashamed when I threw up. That was another thing that had never
happened to me before. My mouth was suddenly full, I tried to swallow
everything down again, and clenched my teeth with my hand in front of
my mouth, but it all burst out of my mouth anyway straight through my
fingers. I leaned against the wall of the building, looked down at the
vomit around my feet, and retched something clear and sticky.
When rescue came, it was almost an assault. The woman seized my arm
and pulled me through the dark entryway into the courtyard. Up above
there were lines strung from window to window, loaded with laundry.
Wood was stacked in the courtyard; in an open workshop a saw screamed
and shavings flew. The woman turned on the tap, washed my hand first,
and then cupped both of hers and threw water in my face. I dried
myself with a handkerchief.
"Get that one!" There were two pails standing by the faucet; she
grabbed one and filled it. I took the other one, filled it, and
followed her through the entryway. She swung her arm, the water
sluiced down across the walk and washed the vomit into the gutter.
Then she took my pail and sent a second wave of water across the walk.
When she straightened up, she saw I was crying. "Hey, kid," she said,
startled, "hey, kid"--and took me in her arms. I wasn't much taller
than she was, I could feel her breasts against my chest. I smelled the
sourness of my own breath and felt her fresh sweat as she held me, and
didn't know where to look. I stopped crying.
She asked me where I lived, put the pails down in the entryway, and
took me home, walking beside me holding my schoolbag in one hand and
my arm in the other. It's no great distance from Bahnhofstrasse to
Blumenstrasse. She walked quickly, and her decisiveness helped me to
keep pace with her. She said goodbye in front of our building.
That same day my mother called in the doctor, who diagnosed hepatitis.
At some point I told my mother about the woman. If it hadn't been for
that, I don't think I would have gone to see her. But my mother simply
assumed that as soon as I was better, I would use my pocket money to
buy some flowers, go introduce myself, and say thank you, which was
why at the end of February I found myself heading for Bahnhofstrasse.
Chapter Two
The building on Bahnhofstrasse is no longer there. I don't know when
or why it was torn down. I was away from my hometown for many years.
The new building, which must have been put up in the seventies or
eighties, has five floors plus finished space under the roof, is
devoid of balconies or arched windows, and its smooth faade is an
expanse of pale plaster. A plethora of doorbells indicates a plethora
of tiny apartments, with tenants moving in and out as casually as you
would pick up and return a rented car. There's a computer store on the
ground floor where once there were a pharmacy, a supermarket, and a
video store.
The old building was as tall, but with only four floors, a first floor
of faceted sandstone blocks, and above it three floors of brickwork
with sandstone arches, balconies, and window surrounds. Several steps
led up to the first floor and the stairwell; they were wide at the
bottom, narrower above, set between walls topped with iron banisters
and curving outwards at street level. The front door was flanked by
pillars, and from the corners of the architrave one lion looked up
Bahnhofstrasse while another looked down. The entryway through which
the woman had led me to the tap in the courtyard was a side entrance.
I had been aware of this building since I was a little boy. It
dominated the whole row. I used to think that if it made itself any
heavier and wider, the neighboring buildings would have to move aside
and make room for it. Inside, I imagined a stairwell with plaster
moldings, mirrors, and an oriental runner held down with highly
polished brass rods. I assumed that grand people would live in such a
grand building. But because the building had darkened with the passing
of the years and the smoke of the trains, I imagined that the grand
inhabitants would be just as somber, and somehow peculiar--deaf or
dumb or hunchbacked or lame.
In later years I dreamed about the building again and again. The
dreams were similar, variations on one dream and one theme. I'm
walking through a strange town and I see the house. It's one in a row
of buildings in a district I don't know. I go on, confused, because
the house is familiar but its surroundings are not. Then I realize
that I've seen the house before. I'm not picturing Bahnhofstrasse in
my hometown, but another city, or another country. For example, in my
dream I'm in Rome, see the house, and realize I've seen it already in
Bern. This dream recognition comforts me; seeing the house again in
different surroundings is no more surprising than encountering an old
friend by chance in a strange place. I turn around, walk back to the
house, and climb the steps. I want to go in. I turn the door handle.
If I see the house somewhere in the country, the dream is more
long-drawn-out, or I remember its details better. I'm driving a car. I
see the house on the right and keep going, confused at first only by
the fact that such an obviously urban building is standing there in
the middle of the countryside. Then I realize that this is not the
first time I've seen it, and I'm doubly confused. When I remember
where I've seen it before, I turn around and drive back. In the dream,
the road is always empty, as I can turn around with my tires squealing
and race back. I'm afraid I'll be too late, and I drive faster. Then I
see it. It is surrounded by fields, rape or wheat or vines in the
Palatinate, lavender in Provence. The landscape is flat, or at most
gently rolling. There are no trees. The day is cloudless, the sun is
shining, the air shimmers and the road glitters in the heat. The fire
walls make the building look unprepossessing and cut off. They could
be the firewalls of any building. The house is no darker than it was
on Bahnhofstrasse, but the windows are so dusty that you can't see
anything inside the rooms, not even the curtains; it looks blind.
I stop on the side of the road and walk over to the entrance. There's
nobody about, not a sound to be heard, not even a distant engine, a
gust of wind, a bird. The world is dead. I go up the steps and turn
the knob.
But I do not open the door. I wake up knowing simply that I took hold
of the knob and turned it. Then the whole dream comes back to me, and
I know that I've dreamed it before.
Chapter Three
I didn't know the woman's name.
Clutching my bunch of flowers, I hesitated in front of the door and
all the bells. I would rather have turned around and left, but then a
man came out of the building, asked who I was looking for, and
directed me to Frau Schmitz on the third floor.
No decorative plaster, no mirrors, no runner. Whatever unpretentious
beauty the stairwell might once have had, it could never have been
comparable to the grandeur of the faade, and it was long gone in any
case. The red paint on the stairs had worn through in the middle, the
stamped green linoleum that was glued on the walls to shoulder height
was rubbed away to nothing, and bits of string had been stretched
across the gaps in the banisters. It smelled of cleaning fluid.
Perhaps I only became aware of all this some time later. It was always
just as shabby and just as clean, and there was always the same smell
of cleaning fluid, sometimes mixed with the smell of cabbage or beans,
or fried food or boiling laundry.
I never learned a thing about the other people who lived in the
building apart from these smells, the mats outside the apartment
doors, and the nameplates under the doorbells. I cannot even remember
meeting another tenant on the stairs.
Nor do I remember how I greeted Frau Schmitz. I had probably prepared
two or three sentences about my illness and her help and how grateful
I was, and recited them to her. She led me into the kitchen.
It was the largest room in the apartment, and contained a stove and
sink, a tub and a boiler, a table, two chairs, a kitchen cabinet, a
wardrobe, and a couch with a red velvet spread thrown over it. There
was no window. Light came in through the panes of the door leading out
onto the balcony--not much light; the kitchen was only bright when the
door was open. Then you heard the scream of the saws from the
carpenter's shop in the yard and smelled the smell of wood.
The apartment also had a small, cramped living room with a dresser, a
table, four chairs, a wing chair, and a coal stove. It was almost
never heated in winter, nor was it used much in summer either. The
window faced Bahnhofstrasse, with a view of what had been the railroad
station, but was now being excavated and already in places held the
freshly laid foundations of the new courthouse and administration
buildings. Finally, the apartment also had a windowless toilet. When
the toilet smelled, so did the hall.
I don't remember what we talked about in the kitchen. Frau Schmitz was
ironing; she had spread a woolen blanket and a linen cloth over the
table; lifting one piece of laundry after another from the basket, she
ironed them, folded them, and laid them on one of the two chairs. I
sat on the other. She also ironed her underwear, and I didn't want to
look, but I couldn't help looking. She was wearing a sleeveless smock,
blue with little pale red flowers on it. Her shoulder-length,
ash-blond hair was fastened with a clip at the back of her neck. Her
bare arms were pale. Her gestures of lifting the iron, using it,
setting it down again, and then folding and putting away the laundry
were an exercise in slow concentration, as were her movements as she
bent over and then straightened up again. Her face as it was then has
been overlaid in my memory by the faces she had later. If I see her in
my mind's eye as she was then, she doesn't have a face at all, and I
have to reconstruct it. High forehead, high cheekbones, pale blue
eyes, full lips that formed a perfect curve without any indentation,
square chin. A broad-planed, strong, womanly face. I know that I found
it beautiful. But I cannot recapture its beauty.
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