57 pages • 1 hour read
Bernhard SchlinkThe Reader
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1995A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 3, Chapters 1-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 3, Chapter 1 Summary
Michael spends the summer after the trial studying by himself in the university library. He spends the winter semester similarly but goes skiing with friends over Christmas break. He gets a fever, and the myriad accusations and horrors that came out during the trial come back to Michael. He’s numb no more, and though he contemplates the Nazi past and issues of guilt and accountability, he doesn’t take part in the West German student movement.
The Nazis are part of Michael’s reality in Germany. Former Nazis have careers in government, the courts, and universities. Antisemitism continues to manifest. Identifying guilty parties doesn’t banish the shame, but it makes it seem like there’s an action that people can apply to the previous generation’s shame and the suffering it causes.
Michael doesn’t accuse his parents of anything. When he tries to lay guilt on Hanna, he feels guilty. Michael questions the moral superiority of the student movement. He wonders whether their love for their parents implicates them the same way his love for Hanna incriminates him.
Part 3, Chapter 2 Summary
As a law clerk, Michael marries Gertrud. They met at a ski lodge, and she’s also studying law. Michael doesn’t tell her about Hanna. Gertrud and Michael have a daughter, Julia, and when Julia is five, they get a divorce. A psychoanalyst thinks Michael has mother issues. Michael tells future partners about Hanna, but he realizes he shouldn’t keep talking about her: A person reveals their truth through their actions.
Part 3, Chapter 3 Summary
When Michael and Gertrud are still married, the professor of the Nazi seminar dies. To get to the funeral, Michael takes the streetcar and thinks of Hanna. At the funeral, he talks to another mourner who wonders why Michael went every day. The mourner came to the trial only on Wednesdays; sometimes, he gave Michael a ride. He saw Michael staring at Hanna and wants to know if something happened between them. Michael doesn’t know how to answer, and after leaving the cemetery, he hops onto a streetcar.
Part 3, Chapter 4 Summary
Gertrud works in the judiciary. Michael becomes a legal historian, so he can stay home and care for Julia. Michael didn’t want to be a lawyer or a judge—Hanna’s trial made such roles seem reductive. As a legal historian, Michael feels the past is as active as the present. He studies the Third Reich and other periods, like the Enlightenment. He thinks the history of law demonstrates progress but then changes his opinion. He also rereads The Odyssey and finds it’s not about homecoming—it’s about crisscrossing motion, like the law.
Part 3, Chapter 5 Summary
After Gertrud and Michael separate, Michael reads The Odyssey out loud. He tapes it and sends the tapes to Hanna in jail. He also reads her works by Arthur Schnitzler, Anton Chekhov, Heinrich Heine, and Franz Kafka. He keeps a notebook of what he reads and starts to write his own pieces, which he reads out loud to Hanna. The tapes feature no personal remarks or comments. Once Michael is done reading, he stops recording.
Part 3, Chapter 6 Summary
After sending her tapes for four years, Michael receives a note from Hanna about how much she liked the last story. The handwriting looks labored and childlike, but still Michael is ecstatic: Hanna can write. Michael receives more notes from her. She comments on Gottfried Keller and Goethe's poem. Michael realizes she thinks all of the authors are contemporary. He doesn’t write back to Hanna, but he keeps all her notes and notices how her handwriting becomes less effortful.
Part 3, Chapters 1-6 Analysis
The motif of sickness and the theme of Feelings Versus Numbness return with Michael’s fever: The fever awakens his feelings. Michael reflects, “All the questions and fears, accusations and self-accusations, all the horror and pain that had erupted during the trial and been immediately deadened were back, and back for good” (128-29). He has a slew of reservations about morals, complicity, and punishment, and he adopts an exhaustive, philosophical tone to confront them. With no justice granted by Hanna’s trial, Michael begins thinking in earnest about justice and culpability.
Michael alludes to the West German student movement of the 1960s, but he’s not a part of it. Aside from protesting changes to the university system and the deadly Vietnam War, the younger people demonstrate against the previous generation’s complicity with Nazi atrocities. On these issues, Michael says, “I felt so removed from the other students that I had no desire to agitate and demonstrate with them” (129). Michael’s separation from the movement reinforces his independent character. He’s a critical thinker and doesn’t go along with groups. His alienation from his generation also plays into the theme of The Manipulation of Time and Memory. Michael doesn’t connect himself to the 1960s or any specific period or generation. Michael admits, “[I]t would have been good for me back then to be able to feel I was part of my generation” (131). It’s easier to blend in than to stand out, but Michael’s questioning, unsure style removes him from the students’ moral certainty. Michael wonders, “How could one feel guilt and shame, and at the same time parade one’s self-righteousness?” (130), noting that the students do not question their own family members about their complicity with the Nazi regime. For Michael, the student movement echoes the sanctimonious trial. Neither is about justice—they’re about deflecting blame.
Michael believes the students’ “love for their parents made them irrevocably complicit in their crimes” (131). He equates loving a former Nazi or someone who went along with the genocidal regime with acceptance. Nazis should symbolize intolerable evil. Here, Nazism becomes a sickness and consumes one’s identity. Michael can’t love Hanna without also loving her Nazi past; it’s always a part of her, like a permanent disease. Unlike the students or trial participants, Michael confronts his complicity. He didn’t know Hanna was an SS guard when he fell in love with her, but he remains drawn to her despite her past. His choice to begin reading to her again represents a belief in rehabilitation; while he does not otherwise engage with her, he resists dehumanizing Hanna. It is easy to blame monsters for atrocities, but ignoring their humanity creates space for others to behave cruelly.
Michael continues to scramble time and subvert a linear narrative. He marries Gertrud, has a child with her, divorces her, and then describes several plot points before their divorce. The marriage links to the theme of Secrets Versus Understanding. He doesn’t tell Gertrud about Hanna, but sharing his secret with later partners doesn’t help him either. Sharing secrets doesn’t always lead to understanding or catharsis. This emphasizes the ideas about truth raised during the trial; the law does not always result in justice.
The symbolism behind literacy shifts in these chapters. Now, reading symbolizes genuine connection—it’s a positive way for Michael and Hanna to remain and contact. Their correspondence ties into the theme of time: Hanna thinks all the authors are contemporary, creating a different context for engaging with the world. The texts Michael reads to her on tape also connect to the story. The Odyssey relates to the movement of time and foreshadows the end: Hanna can’t return home. Kafka’s works The Trial (1925) and “In the Penal Colony” (1919) make punishment and justice seem like odious enterprises. The intertextuality in these chapters reinforces the book’s explorations of justice.
