Jerry Bonnell Reaction #3

By the conclusion of The Reader, I have come to realize that innocence and guilt are not necessarily absolutes. We  attempt to maintain order and balance by manifesting our ideals in a judiciary system. However, despite our best efforts, even the structured Court is more inconsistent in nature than we would like to admit. Trials are a search for factual evidence leading to a black-and-white judgment devoid of nuance and inconsiderate of human emotion and consciousness. By making rulings according to laws and precedent, the judicial system fails to recognize the complexities and incongruities of human nature. We are not perfect, though the judiciary holds us to a false notion of perfection.

Enter Hanna, the woman on trial for War Crimes as an SS officer during World War II. From the moment of her introduction, it is clear that she is not perfect. She makes a morally ambiguous decision of seducing a teenage boy, and subsequently leaving him without a formal farewell. We are automatically forced to hold a strong prejudice against her actions. “What is wrong with her and why would she deceive such a young boy?” are questions that we ask during the novel’s unraveling. When she is revealed to have been a former SS officer during the war, these questions suddenly have an answer. We assume that she is a caricature of a Nazi, as depicted by the media. But, in fact, her role during the war is not much different from that of an Allied soldier, in that she followed orders and tried to help ease the pain of her prisoners when she could. It can be said that she made the best of a bad situation and that given her position, it would have been difficult to make different decisions. This is most apparent when she questions the presiding judge on the trial. “What would you have done?” she asks, and he is unable to respond. Yet even the reader is lured into this question. What is the appropriate course of action? To follow orders or to accept death? Can a person be held to the impossible standard of upholding morality while also faced with a life-or-death situation?

This book masterfully tackles some of the deepest questions of our human nature, without pushing the political envelope too far. In the case of Hanna, was she supposed to act altruistically or in the interest of her self-survival? Likewise, does Michael’s love for Hanna change the gruesomeness of her seduction and arguably her abuse of him as a teenager?