Shame and Guilt: Hidden Metaphors in Bernard Schink’s ​The Reader

Guilt is a powerful concept. When an individual commits something they know is morally wrong, a heavy feeling settles in their chest, all-consuming and at times, unbearable. They carry that guilt for a long time, looking for any and every way to rid themselves from it. In Bernard Schlink's award-winning novel, ​The Reader, ​we can see exactly how much of an effect guilt has on an individual’s life. Critically acclaimed by the Los Angeles Times as a “formally beautiful, disturbing, and morally devastating novel”, ​The Reader ​tells the story of a young man whose life was forever changed when he was just a teenager.

Michael Berg had been diagnosed with hepatitis in the fall of his fifteenth birthday and the illness lasted until spring. One October afternoon, Michael was walking home from school when his queasy stomach got the best of him. Even though his sickness was one that he had no control over Michael feels guilty about it, saying that he was “ashamed of being so weak [and] even more ashamed when [he] threw up” (Schlink,4).

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The fact that the novel opens with Michael's illness and feelings of shame creates a mood of ​disquietude and anguish in the novel, setting the stage for the complications of guilt and shame that the author will later elaborate on as the novel progresses. ​A middle-aged woman came to his aid, handling him roughly, an assistance Michael felt was “almost [like] an assault” (Schlink, 4). The woman’s actions are simultaneously presented as both good-natured and hostile, which again foreshadow feelings that Michael will later have about her.

As the novel progresses, Michael learns that the woman’s name is Frau Schmitz (Hanna), and returns to the area to thank her for helping him. Eventually, he finds out where she lives. He can’t seem to recall what they were talking about, but he clearly remembered watching her, transfixed, as she was ironing her clothes. He vividly describes her features by stating that she had a “ high forehead, high cheekbones, pale blue eyes, full lips that formed a perfect curve without any indentation, square chin”(Schlink, 12). What’s striking about Michael's description is that it aligns perfectly with the Nazi racial ideology of the superior “Aryan Race” (​'Nazism and race', ​Wikipedia​), representing one of the major themes in the novel. `