The Confession She Would Rather Make: The Reader’s Exploration of Responsibility

Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader is a commentary on the curious tendency of human beings to meekly go along with acts of evil rather than bravely stand up against the system and risk social judgment or ostracization as a result. The novel’s narrative revolves around two hidden pasts: two secrets which, if told, could have drastic consequences for human life and dignity.  Through this dichotomous structure of intertwined pasts, The Reader explores the grave consequences of our choices and sends its readers a message about the manner in which individuals define the guilt of their actions.

The first hidden past is Hanna’s illiteracy. This secret, despite its relative mildness, is the most protected aspect of Hanna’s life. Hanna’s immense embarrassment about her illiteracy centers around her fear of being looked down upon or being thought of as inferior and incapable. Schlink seems to use Hanna’s embarrassment as an observation that society places more shame on unintelligence or incompetence than on actual immorality. In fact, she is so ashamed about her illiteracy that she effectively ensures her own imprisonment in order to avoid revealing it. Hanna keeps this secret so carefully because she views it as a personal failing of her character and associates this secret with a failure in individual responsibility. On the other hand, Hanna’s illiteracy itself is a relatively harmless imperfection that does not affect anyone other than Hanna herself. Illiteracy is not an flaw that causes larger societal damage because it is merely a non-violent ineptitude that can easily be learned and remedied. In fact, if told, this secret could save Hanna’s very dignity by giving her a lesser sentence in prison. From Hanna’s perspective, however, to reveal this secret requires admitting to a flaw for which there is no other individual to place blame on and a flaw that raises questions on one’s intellect and ability. In a time when the ability of an adult to read and write was not only expected but immediately assumed, declaring herself to be illiterate would be far more isolating than almost any other personal failure, no matter how criminal. For this reason, Hanna finds her illiteracy to be the most difficult of the two pasts to expose.

The second hidden past is Hanna’s life as a concentration camp guard in allegiance with the SS. This secret is only safeguarded by Hanna before the trial. During the trial, Hanna instead chooses to be open and even defensive of her actions. When describing her tasks of selecting which individuals would be killed each month or ensuring that no one escapes from the burning church, she seems righteous rather than remorseful. Not only does Hanna outline her responsibilities as a concentration camp guard and attempt to gain sympathy for her allegiance to the Nazi regime, she actually takes the responsibility of a crime she did not commit so that she doesn’t have to reveal her most shameful secret: her illiteracy. The element of allegiance to a greater cause causes her to feel less guilt on her moral conscience for the consequences of her actions, as she can conveniently siphon the blame off to the higher authorities whose orders she claims she was merely following. Schlink uses this shedding of responsibility to comment on the general nature of many who worked in allegiance to the Nazis: the position of authority allowed these individuals to take less blame and thus feel less guilty about the actions they have committed, despite their actions being objectively immoral.

By juxtaposing the guilt Hanna feels about her two hidden pasts, Schlink allows readers to attempt to answer one of the most unfathomable questions regarding the Holocaust: how did the accomplices of the Nazi regime consistently and deliberately ignore the horrifying consequences of their actions and why did they not take the responsibility to stop the evil acts from occurring? While the question remains difficult, Hanna’s story reminds us that it is not the consequences of our actions but rather the amount of personal responsibility that we take for them that determines our sense of guilt. Despite the far more horrific repercussions of her past as Nazi guard, revealing this past allows her to be another guard among many Nazi accomplices who committed terrible crimes and places her lower on the hierarchy of responsibility than the Nazis who had greater authority than her. While her illiteracy is comparatively almost inconsequential, it carries a stigma of personal failure that requires her to take the fall on her own and be considered inferior to those around her as a result. Hanna’s story is a brilliant commentary on how human nature allows us to look past the consequences of our actions by absolving ourselves of responsibility.

Through the dichotomous story of Hanna’s two biggest secrets, Schlink develops the argument that guilt is determined not by the consequences but the responsibility of our actions and places this argument in the larger context of the Holocaust itself.