work cited the reader by bernhard schlink

Literary writers provide a strong setting in the narrative of telling the novel. The history and love story are interrelated. The history of the holocaust sets the stage for telling love stories between Hanna and Michael. Likewise in the novel The Reader by Bernhard Schlink, readers / researchers will not be able to be separated from the context behind the work.

Therefore, reading is not a process that runs in one direction, but rather a form of dynamic interaction between the text and the reader. The knowledge will fill the horizon of understanding when reading the text (novel) with its contextuality. The reader already has a certain amount of knowledge that is realized or will not equip the reading. In this case, it is necessary to pay attention to the reader's situation and reading situation when dealing with literary works. The others sought her advice when there were problems, and if she intervened in an argument, her decision was final.Literary research, essentially is a process of meeting between literary works and researchers.

There are references to her position in prison, as someone who had authority and was greatly respected by the other women she befriended but kept at a distance. Hanna was as powerful as an inmate in the prison as she was as a person in the outside world. She no longer faced the chores of being illiterate, which Michael explains as, “I knew about the helplessness in everyday activities, finding one’s way or finding an address or choosing a meal in a restaurant, about how illiterates anxiously stick to prescribed patterns and familiar routines, about how much energy it takes to conceal one’s inability to read and write, energy lost to actual living” (63). While in prison, learning to read and write freed her from all the shackles that had tied her down all these years it gave her absolute independence and a sense of freedom from the prison, from the holocaust, and Michael.Īnd most of all, it exempted her from her most immense guilt, the burden of which she carried through her entire life.

And she took her term in prison as that opportunity. It is possible that she always wanted to experience it on her own at some later stage in life. Her bonding with Michael, although mainly physical, helped her explore the world of books. Unfortunately, Michael realized this much too late but is hurt by it and can be sensed when he says, “I could feel how little my admiration and happiness were worth compared to what learning to read and write must have cost Hanna, how meagre they must have been if they could not even get me to answer her, visit her, talk to her” (Schlink 66). She felt that the best way to do this was by enabling herself to read and write. She wanted desperately to accept that her relationship with Michael was not how it used to be and yet wanted to keep her hopes alive. It was also her only hope of reconnecting with Michael and reviving a lost relationship in time. She learned to read with him the tapes she received from him while in prison were her energy source.

Work cited the reader by bernhard schlink