The Reader Questions- Annika

1) Is Hanna afforded any absolution for her crimes? Does she achieve any sense of ‘atonement’?

I think that Hanna does receive some sort of atonement by the end of the novel however it is only to a certain extent. She mentions to Michael that “Not even the court can call me [Hanna] to account. But the dead can”, which suggests that nothing the court does can decide how she feels inside, they can only punish her and put her in jail but they cannot determine whether she should feel guilty or not. Although it appears that she does not feel much responsibility at this point, Hanna then goes on to say that the dead “came every night, whether I wanted them or not” which shows the nightmares and suffering that she had to endure continuously from her actions and crimes. She says that they dead understand her which suggests that she recognises her wrong doings and that the reason why they visit her every night is to constantly haunt her and remind her of her crimes. Nonetheless, Hanna ends up committing suicide by hanging herself just before she is due to be released from 18years of prison which suggests that she cannot face the outside world in fear of her crimes or being alone (she does not have family or friends and to some degree not even Michael) therefore she escapes by killing herself. This does not grant her absolution or make her crimes any less sinful but just shows her as a coward or that she doesn’t feel a great deal of guilt or remorse. At the very end of the novel the survivor of the Auschwitz camp does not even accept the money offered by Hanna and thus does not grant Hanna absolution. She even criticises Hanna and calls her brutal showing that she certainly has not forgiven Hanna for her crimes. IN addition, the woman takes the tea caddy; something that was stolen from her as if she is taking back what ‘Hanna’ or the people Hanna represents took away from her. Although this does not show Hanna’s atonement the fact that she accepts to donate the money to and organisation shows that she understand Hanna’s intentions but she cannot forgive her, therefore in a way she is granted a miniscule amount of atonement.

2) Is Schlink guilty of the unforgivable act (especially unforgivable given his nationality) of making the unacceptable somehow acceptable and of deliberately using his skills as a writer to encourage readers to feel sympathy for Hanna?

I do not think that Schlink is guilty of encouraging the reader to feel sympathy for Hanna because he was not involved in the actual war crimes that many Germans partook in therefore he cannot be blamed or accused for something that he did not do, even if he is German himself. Schlink says himself that justice is very difficult and that many of the courts did not possess the capacity needed at that time. Schlink was a man growing up as a second generation just after the war, because of this he had to experience school and life while discovering that people close to him weren’t really who he thought they were; teachers turned out to have committed war crimes. All of this, Schlink says was very tough to deal with in particular for the people who actually committed these crimes, some with the un-intention of brutality, such as Hanna. I think Schlink makes the unacceptable acceptable through Hanna by making it possible for us to feel sympathy towards her (particularly in part 3 with the letters, her appearance and the judgment of the survivor)in order to show us that justice is not as simple as it seems; we cannot simply say this is wrong and this is right. Schlink leaves it up to the reader to decide if Hanna should be punished or whether she should be atoned because of this I do not think it is unforgivable that Schlink wrote the novel in this way as he is only trying to raise questions of justice and to allow the reader to see that not all “monstrous people who committed terrible crimes were monsters” and we should attempt to see past their crimes and forgive them.