themes of the reader by bernhard schlink

when Michael found out that Hanna was an SS guard, Michael kept saying that he “felt nothing” (Schlink 24). The author also utilizes the setting in order to convey the altering personality that is michael’s personality.

Here it is implicit that the author uses the reflective narration in order to emphasise the theme of guilt and how difficult it is to deal with. this narration from Michael utilizes rhetorical questions, anaphora, and commas in order to emphasise the difficulty of his generation dealing with guilt because of the disgusting events that the first generation caused. Should we only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt? To what purpose?…was that all there was to it now” (Schlink 29). an example of that is when Michael said “ What should our second generation have done, what should it do with the knowledge of the horrors of the extermination of the Jews? …even if the horrors themselves are not questioned, instead of accepting them as something in the face of which we can only fall silent in revulsion, shame, and guilt. The reflective narration helped portray the theme of guilt throughout the novel in many ways. the author chose to utilize a reflective first person narration in order to better convey certain themes and characters throughout the novel. the novel was narrated with a first person narration and it was mostly a reflective narration throughout the novel. The narrative voice in the novel ‘The reader by Bernhard Schlink had many significant roles.

Themes of the reader by bernhard schlink