Part III: Ch. 5 ~ Ch. 9: Hanna, In Retrospect

In this section of the novel, it seems like Schlink purposely reversed the roles of Michael and Hanna. After reading chapter nine, I regarded Michael as selfish and apathetic while finding myself sympathizing for Hanna's state in prison. My first impressions of Hanna were mostly negative and I pictured her a manipulative, insensitive, and irresponsible woman for engaging in such a relationship with Michael. However, I'm beginning to consider that Hanna and Michael share more similarities than they do in the their differences. In a way, although he was a fifteen-year old teenager, I think Michael also has his own share of irresponsibility and mistakes in his decision to be in a relationship with Hanna. He was given the choice in pursuing a relationship with Hanna or leaving her at any time if he so wishes. But of course he was too enamored and deeply attached to Hanna's presence to really ever think of hurting her.

But in part III of the novel, Michael has changed.

During the early stages of their relationship, Michael had known that Hanna would never open up to him completely, never love him to the extreme that he loved her. Hanna was selfish with her love, limiting the amount of space and time that she and Michael shared together, but now Michael refuses to directly communicate with Hanna, only recording himself reading books aloud to her. Michael confesses when he meets Hanna for the first time since she was in prison, "But I could feel how little my admiration and happiness were worth compared to what learning to read and write must have cost Hanna, how meager they must have been if they could not even get me to answer her, visit her, talk to her. I had granted Hanna a small niche....but not a place in my life." (198) His selfish behavior is almost identical to how Hanna had been selfish with her love for Michael. I also think it's worth pointing that during the times Michael was reading aloud to Hanna, they were treated as equals and Hanna was not dominant, but rather the listener and Michael the one with the power to speak. I feel like the act of reading aloud to Hanna was really what bonded Michael and Hanna's love for each other and represented how they both took care of one another.



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I also saw a different side of Hanna that I haven't seen in last two parts of the novel. I can finally empathize with how she genuinely feels, now that she's putting down her guard and letting go her pride. Hanna too makes a confession, something which she never really found the courage to tell him before, Hanna tells Michael, "I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyways, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, then no one can call you to account....But the dead can. They understand." (198) By the end of chapter nine, I gain a new respect for Hanna and I sympathize with her loneliness and guilt which she had to carry for all her life. I don't think her situation can ever be understood because no matter how hard she tries to better her actions in the future, it will never change what she had committed in the past, and that's a tragedy she has to accept.