The Reader

In the story The Reader, the main characters Hanna and Michael are faced with several moral dilemmas, which challenges them into making changes that lead simultaneously growth as well as their demise. Hanna faces the challenge of deciding if her pride is worth more then her own freedom. It is in this fear, the loss of her dignity, which ultimately shapes the character she becomes in the end. Michael, the other main character, falls deeply in love with Hanna. He is forced to make a decision on whether or not it is justified to judge someone with the intent of knowing what he believed to be best for them. Hanna and Michael share a brief summer where they shared a physically intimate relationship. Although physically close very little detail was shared on any aspect of Hanna’s former personal life. At the time that they had met, Hanna had been the dominant one, mainly on the account that there was a significant age difference, where Hanna was twice Michael’s age. At the end of the summer, Hanna moved away for no apparent reason at all. Michael did not have such an easy time adapting to life without Hanna. We see this in that he often accounted for there being something missing in all his relationships he had after her. Several years since he last saw, Michael is in his final years of law school, he is required to attend a trial in which several former SS Nazi guards are on trial for the death of a group of prisoners, Hanna had been one of those guards. The other defendants had united together to place the blame against Hanna, accusing her of writing out the report that lied about the events that took place that ultimately led to the death of the prisoners, And accusing her of single handily preventing any of the other guards from saving any of the prisoners. Denying all allegations at first, when asked to prove so with a writing sample Hanna quickly denies, and willingly admits to the court that she in fact wrote the report alone. When one of the surviving

Cited: Schlink, Bernhard. The Reader. Vintage, 2008. Print.