Guilt And Shame In The Reader Essay

, Research Paper

Sebastian Hinds

Mr. La Bonne

EHRS/pd0

4/8

Guilt and Shame in The Reader

The Holocaust was a tragic event in history which took the lives of many

people, and deeply affected those who witnessed the tragedy. Not only did this

affect the people who lived through it, it also affected everyone who was connected

to it. The survivors were lucky to have made it but there are times when their

memories and flashbacks have made them wish they were the ones who died

instead of living with the horrible aftermath. This is called survivors guilt. The

psychological effects of the Holocaust on people from different sides such as

soldiers and German citizens and survivors of the ghettos and camps vary in many

ways yet in others are profoundly similar. Many contrasting opinions have been

published about the victims and survivors of the Holocaust based on the writers’

different cultural backgrounds, personal experiences and intellectual traditions.

However this had not only an effect on the victims but also on the people who were

responsible for the atrocities. An aspect of the Holocaust that is tapped in to very

rarely is the psychological effect that their participation had on people like the

concentration camp employees. Did the horrors of what they had done haunt them

forever. How could they live with the guilt and shame. Even Heroes who did

everything they possibly could have, felt extreme guilt about not having done

enough. In the scene in “Schindlers List” when he is saying good bye to all the

people he s saved, he breaks down and expresses the anguish he felt for having

three people pinned to his shirt (the golden pin), another two on his finger (his ring)

and another five lives wasted in the metal next to him (his car). In another

interesting movie I saw “The Young Lions,” Marlon Brandow plays a “good”

German soldier. Even though he is ordered to, on several occasions he refuses to

obey orders, such as beating up a teenager in the French resistance, like shooting a

unarmed British soldier, and other atrocities. At the end of the war he walks into a

concentration camp and refuses to help the commandant slaughter the remaining

prisoners. Ironically, When he finally smashes his rifle representing German

aggression and his part in the war, he gets shot almost by mistake by a Jewish

American soldier. In Germany still today people who lived through the war; and the

younger generations too are dealing with German guilt. It is almost impossible to

comprehend how so many normal people could have gotten involved in such

inhumane acts. Bernard Schlink s book The Reader written in 1995 by virtue of

its moral force and artistic quality, brings something entirely new and profoundly

original to the never-ending labor of grief for Germany s past.

-Jorge Semprun, Le Journal du Dimanche

The Reader is about two people who had a very taboo and uncommon

relationship. Michael, the narrator, is only fifteen when he meets and falls in love

with Hanna who is more than twice his age. Hanna seduces him after seeing

his interest in her. Their relationship becomes a love affair with very strict habits.

Every time they would meet they would do the same things. First Michael would

read to Hanna, afterwards they would make love and sleep. There were one or two

occasions in the book in which this strict schedule is not followed. What leads

Hanna to participate in this relationship. Hannah was illiterate. She feels extreme

shame for this. It is top priority to her to keep this a secret from the world. But

like every Human Hanna was curious about the world and books in particular.

When she saw Michael she realized that he would be a perfect means of

transmitting this information to her without revealing her secret. She knew that

Michael was too young and naive to ask questions. She could do with him what she

wanted without having to worry about being found out. She seduced him into

becoming her story teller.

To do something like this one most have some very serious feelings. Hannah

had an incredible amount of shame for the fact that she could not read or write.

Her shame went so far as to quit and turn down great jobs, live a lonely life with out

opening up to anyone, and even to go to jail for the rest of her life, taking the blame

for a crime she didn t commit. She would rather go through all of this than be found

out as an illiterate. It is amazing the determination she had to keep this a secret from

the world.

Now many people may believe that Hanna was kind of a pervert or

something along those lines as she was engaging in sex with someone much

younger than herself. In essence this is true except for the fact that Hanna was most

likely haunted by her memories from her duty as prison guard. As witnessed in

books such as “Night” by Elie Wiesel many people associat

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