Pt. 3

                I must say I thoroughly enjoyed this novel, and I must admit that although I felt more pressured by the sudden short amount of time we were given to read the novel, it allowed me to read it at a more leisurely pace without much pause in between, which I believe ruins the flow of thought and the overall experience of reading a novel, especially one with this much weight.

                The novel was touching, and once you got used to the stark awkwardness of the sexual relations between Hanna and the young Michael, the story really begins to unfold. I fell in love with the overall theme of reading, and how it played different roles in the story. When Michael read to Hanna, he was building a frail yet true relationship with her, developing himself as a person, and helping her learn how to read, better herself, and overcome some of her shame, despite her eventual suicide. The Reader is an unconventional love story, using an idea much like the one found in Lolita, but unlike it, the novel leaves us knowing that the love and effort put into such love was not entirely wrong, and not entirely in vain.

                There were many negative outcomes of Michael’s involvement with Hannah; Michael came of age much too soon, much to quickly, with a woman much older than he was, and as a result of it, he becomes intertwined in her life and questionable past.  His premature sexual awakening acted as a shackle at first, but once he seemed to break free, he still bore the marks left from the chains, which carried on through his future relationships.

                The complexity of both Hanna and Michael’s characters are what make the novel so successful. It is a very raw, real novel, because all of its contents could very well have happened, and the examples of cause-and-effect portrayed in the novel are also very real as well. But I cannot say I disapprove of the relationship Michael had with Hanna, and this is also due to their complex characters. It is very easy to say that the relationship was taboo, disgusting, and harbored more negative outcomes than positive, but the more I read into it, the more I cannot help that emotions are, more often than not, too strong to be controlled or held down by common sense. Love and lust are powerful feelings, especially when felt for the first time, and in the end of it all, Michael, though crushed, though still following after the ghost of what once was his relationship with Hanna, still felt a sliver of mutual love, and I believe that was enough to make it valid.