The Reader: An Analysis Of The Reader By Hanna Schmitz
Two different persons read a piece about Hanna Schmitz, a woman who joined the SS voluntarily in 1943 and became one of the guards at a concentration camp. She is trialed years later in Germany and is accused of deliberate murder of their prisoners. It is denounced by the daughter of one of the survivors that Hanna and the other guards locked the prisoners up in a church. Shortly afterwards the church was bombed and caught fire. The guards, however, did not open the doors and most women burned to death. Both persons read about the trial but only one of them knows that it is an extract from a book, the Reader (written by Bernhard Schlink) and has read the rest of the book. One of the readers is familiar with the character of Hanna Schmitz, the
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She used to keep the delicate and weak children from working and took them to her house. The children never got permission to speak about what happened inside the room, however one slip of the tongue informed everyone that she was making the children read aloud to her. A logical question would be, why she always chose the delicate and the weak? This could be easily interpreted as a really cruel act. The person, who does not know anything about Hanna, is very likely to conclude that she took the weak and delicate children, because they were easy to overcome and persuade into things. In the end she did have mercy and still sent them away: ‘new ones came’. She almost talks about the children as if they were objects, that should be replaced every now and then. This adds up to the feeling of cruelty. On the other side, the reader who has grown to like Hanna, could argue that she chose the weak and the delicate, because they would never have managed to do the work. In this way, she prolonged the time that they could spent at the working camp and therewith she had postponed their deaths. Nevertheless, she was forced to send them away, since she did not have the power and right to make this decision either. The reader of the book has a more positive approach towards Hanna’s acts, because he/she has noticed that Hanna was a caring person. She had taken care of Michael when he was ill and had even brought him
She used to keep the delicate and weak children from working and took them to her house. The children never got permission to speak about what happened inside the room, however one slip of the tongue informed everyone that she was making the children read aloud to her. A logical question would be, why she always chose the delicate and the weak? This could be easily interpreted as a really cruel act. The person, who does not know anything about Hanna, is very likely to conclude that she took the weak and delicate children, because they were easy to overcome and persuade into things. In the end she did have mercy and still sent them away: ‘new ones came’. She almost talks about the children as if they were objects, that should be replaced every now and then. This adds up to the feeling of cruelty. On the other side, the reader who has grown to like Hanna, could argue that she chose the weak and the delicate, because they would never have managed to do the work. In this way, she prolonged the time that they could spent at the working camp and therewith she had postponed their deaths. Nevertheless, she was forced to send them away, since she did not have the power and right to make this decision either. The reader of the book has a more positive approach towards Hanna’s acts, because he/she has noticed that Hanna was a caring person. She had taken care of Michael when he was ill and had even brought him