Bernard Schlink’s “ The Reader” is thematically and psychologically a complex novel. A hypnotic saga of unfulfilled love – this novel of stylistically restrained writing stands out for its simple, lucid prose; its moral nuances, with ‘reading’ becoming a significant part of character interaction between Hanna and Michael. In fact, it is the leitmotif of the novel; what with the title of the novel also being the ‘The Reader’. However, the betrayal of a generation in the landscape of the post war Germany – given the uniqueness of German history – is also one of the central themes of the novel. ‘The Reader’ is about a generational divide in post war Germany, when an entire generation had either willfully participated or accepted or accommodated the horrific Nazi abuse of power – and the younger generation suffering the moral and ethical guilt.
The relationship between Michael and Hanna is destined not to come to fruition, for it symbolically represents the divide between the two generations. The seduction of the 15-year-old Michael by the 36-year-old Hanna represents the seduction of one whole generation of German by the Nazis. The obsessive love of Michael for Hanna represents the obsessive love and fascination one generation of Germans ( Michael’s father’s and Hanna’s generation) had for the Third Reich. It can be seen in the manner Michael humbles himself: “Then when I proceeded to get bad-tempered myself and we started a fight and Hanna treated me like a nonentity, the fear of losing her returned and I humbled myself and begged her pardon until she took me back. But I was filled with resentment.”(Pg. 73).
As this relationship leaves a marked impact on the psyche of one generation; it similarly leaves a marked impact on the psyche of young Michael. And this relationship is fated to end in violence – with the annihilation of the Nazi power and the Fuehrer committing suicide.
One can see how Michael has to suffer the torment of the guilt for what had Hanna had done during the war. He tries to justify her behavior by arguing with himself that she was only carrying out orders. The younger generation in the post war Germany was traumatized by their parents’ and earlier generation’s active participation in the Nazi Holocaust and genocide. Even if they did not actively participate – they had been silent spectators to the Third Reich’s wanton abuse of power.
“Our parents had played a variety of roles in the Third Reich.” (page 92). Furthermore, Michael goes on to add that while some of them had had official positions in the Wehermacht or the Waffen SS, some in the judiciary or local government, one was a high official in the Ministry of Interior. The younger generation which had been horrified at the idea of the active participation of their parents in the Nazi cruelties also censured them for having accepted and accommodated the executors of the shameful deeds. “We all condemned our parents to shame, even if the only charge we could bring was that after 1945 they had tolerated the perpetrators in their midst.” (page 92).
History is witness to the fact that it is always the intellectuals who ferment the revolution. And it is always the intellectuals (even at the risk of death) who resist the outrage wreaked by the likes of the Nazis. Michael’s father, who is a lecturer of philosophy, also buckled under the Nazi brainwashing onslaught. In fact, he loses his job as a lecturer of Philosophy for having dared to schedule a lecture on Spinoza.
He doesn’t even protest and meekly accepts the loss of his lecturership. Though he doesn’t say it in that many words; it’s a grudge he harbors against his father. “My father did not want to talk about himself, but I knew that he had lost his job as lecturer in Philosophy for scheduling a lecture on Spinoza, and had got himself and us through the war as an editor for a house that published hiking maps and books.” (page 92). He had wished of a more active protest by his father – an intellectual – against the Nazi warlords’ dastardly deeds. The students in the seminar of which Michael is the member, develops a strong group identity and went about with an “eagerness to assimilate horrors”, further developing a gap between the two generations.
While some were uninterested in it ( assimilating horrors), others were alienated by it, and many found it repulsive – this group only becomes convinced that it was upon them to enlighten and accuse. While Hanna may have been an ordinary SS guard at Cracow – it was the discovery that the intellectuals had been equally at fault that perturbs Michael. “The more horrible the events about that we read and heard, the more certain we became of our responsibility to enlighten and accuse. Even when the facts took our breath away, we held them up triumphantly. Look at this!” (page 93).
The yawning gap, divide between Michael and his father is also symptomatic of the divide between the two generations. The distance can be discerned when he goes to meet him at the fag-end of the trial. He wants his advice on whether he should tell the judge that Hanna is illiterate. Perhaps that would mitigate her sentence. “I decided to speak to my father. Not because we were particularly close. My father was undemonstrative, and could neither share his feelings with us children nor deal with the feelings we had for him.” (page 139). And the advice that his father gives is a mix of concreteness and abstractions that leaves Michael flabbergasted of sorts. “No, your problem has no appealing solution. Of course one must act if the situation as you describe it is one of accrued or inherited responsibility. If one knows what is good for another person who in turn is blind to it, then one must try to open his eyes.
One has to leave him the last word, but one must talk to him, to him and not to someone else behind his back.” (page 143). The points raised above only re-enforces the fact that the issue of a generational conflict has been none-too-subtly woven into the memoir-like-fiction. Though the novel may have many layers – some of them not easy to discern, the issue of a generational divide is all too apparent, and the author handles it with authority.
The chasm between Michael and his father, the unfulfilled love between Hanna and Michael ( both belonging to different generations), the moral and legal guilt of the younger generation for the earlier generation’s dark holocaustic deeds, the buckling in of the intellectuals in face of the Third Reich’s horrific onslaught amply throw light on the issue of the generational tension in ‘ The Reader’.