The Reader

As with Michael, Hanna’s character is difficult to categorize. The tidy answer—the one put forth by the court—is that Hanna is the villain and antagonist. She’s a former Nazi who sent women to death in the camps and refused to save women trapped in a burning church near the end of World War II. She’s also a groomer and a pedophile. Regardless of how Michael feels, the difference between his and Hanna’s age creates an unacceptable power imbalance. She preys on him, whether he sees it that way or not.

Michael is unwilling to see himself as a victim, so his narration creates an unreliable portrait of Hanna. Although Michael mostly presents her as an ally and a sexual mentor, there are moments where he acknowledges Hanna’s abusive traits. Michael says, “Sometimes I thought she just bullied me. But either way, I had no choice. I couldn’t talk to her about it. Talking about our fights only led to more fighting” (42). The use of “bullying” here reflects Michael’s youth, subtly illuminating the nature of Hanna’s abuse; Michael is not old or mature enough to see that she is grooming him. Despite Michael’s efforts as a narrator, glimpses of emotional abuse come through. Occasionally, these actions merge with physical abuse, creating a dynamic where passion results in both sex and violence. After Hanna threatens to withhold love from Michael for dismissing the importance of school, they have sex. After she splits his lip with a belt, she strokes it, and they have sex. Her control over him is total; she shares the parts of her life that she wants, and she eventually abandons him without a word.

Michael wants Hanna more than she wants him. Michael says, “She gave me the space in her life that she wanted me to have. I had to be content with that. Wanting more, even wanting to know more, was presumption on my part” (62). Despite their keen intimacy, Hanna manages to keep Michael at a distance. She’s a secretive, taciturn character. Her multiple names reflect her elusiveness. First, she’s a strange, unnamed woman. Then she’s the formal and stern Frau Schmitz. Finally, she’s the informal, intimate Hanna. Even as Hanna, her motives remain a mystery. Michael concocts multiple narratives for her. She selects readers at the camp to make their last moments less grueling, or she sends them away so they won’t divulge her secret. As an adult, Michael avoids engaging with Hanna without the screen of literature, keeping her characterization enigmatic.

Aside from the villain, antagonist, and mentor, Hanna is Michael’s romantic interest. She plays the role of Michael’s girlfriend—though, as Michael admits, strangers might mistake them for mother and son. As a thoroughly sexual character, Hanna fits into archetypes about women Nazis. In explicitly sexual movies, like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS (1975), they’re sadistic and voracious. Their immoderate sexual desires demolish established morals—Hanna has no problem maintaining a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old boy. Conversely, Hanna’s character subverts these stereotypes. Michael and Hanna’s relationship is not exclusively sexual; the reading aspect adds an intellectual dimension. Hanna can’t read, but she’s not dumb or uncultured. She listens carefully to the books Michael reads to her and understands what’s happening in them. Hanna doesn’t have a standard education, but she figures out how to make a living on her own. In jail, she teaches herself how to read and becomes a leader that the other prisoners respect. She’s independent and resourceful, not helpless. This makes her a round character, but it also makes her explicitly culpable in her actions.

While Hanna can be an antagonist, she has her own antagonist: the court. Michael doesn’t give the trial characters names; it’s as if they blend to form a composite character. The amorphous character mistreats and abuses Hanna. The other defendants offload the blame onto her, and the village witnesses go with the story to excuse their conduct. Hanna is “fighting for her own truth, her own justice” (103), while the court condemns her with “grotesque oversimplification” (137). With this, Hanna also represents the shortcomings of Germany’s postwar reckoning with Nazism; where easy scapegoats can be found, they are used to excuse many other perpetrators.