Memory Projector
The theme of memory being something that can be controlled and manipulated as a means of surviving or escaping guilt is initiated early in a scene in which the narrator recalls memories of Hanna through the metaphorical imagery of running a film projector. A film library is the equivalent of the memory of every single frame, but until that film is run through a projector capable of making those frames come to vivid life, they are easily enough forgotten. The mind, however, is not like a projector; it doesn’t require conscious effort to run. In fact, it can still project even against one’s conscious desires:
“pictures of Hanna…I have them stored away, I can project them on a mental screen and watch them, unchanged, unconsumed. There are long periods when I don’t think about them at all. But they always come back into my head, and then I sometimes have to run them repeatedly through my mental projector and watch them. One is Hanna putting on her stockings in the kitchen. Another is Hanna standing in front of the tub holding the towel in her outstretched arms."
Lifequakes
The final example of imagery in the book is one that compares the events and experience of one’s history to the shifting plates beneath the surface of the earth that are responsible for earthquakes. Tectonic plates are in a constant state of tension even when they are not actively moving; it is the result of that tension reaching the breaking point that erupts in one sudden natural phenomenon that rank among the most terrifying humans ever face. The comparison in this imagery is highly suggestive of the way that we spend our lives not recognizing the tension of events in their static state until he breaking point occurs years or even decades later.
“But if something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feelings of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive.”
Excusing Evil
The narrator goes to extraordinary lengths to excuse Hanna from malevolent responsibility for acts of evil during the war years. One of the ways he does so it projected onto himself when his hepatitis has him waylaid for an extended period of time. Bored with reading, he describes the experience of his convalescence in metaphorical terms as entering into a labyrinth, thus setting the stage for rationalizing Hanna’s highly questionable behavior as a manifestation of illness rather than wicked disregard.
“Desires, memories, fears, passions form labyrinths in which we lose and find and then lose ourselves again. They are hours when anything is possible, good or bad. This passes when you get better. But if the illness has last long enough, the sickroom is impregnated with it and although you’re convalescing and the fever has gone, you are still trapped in the labyrinth.”
Rationalizing Evil
Imagery rationalizing the evil of the Nazis runs deeply and broadly and stretches from the barely believable to the outrageously absurd. The man who picks up Michael as he is hitchhiking to the Struthof concentration camp offers a rationale that at first seems closer to the former. Closer scrutiny—about thirty seconds ought to do it—reveals that his line of reasoning and what passes for logic—like almost every other rationale—actually abuts the absurd and is nowhere near believable:
“An executioner is not under orders. He’s doing his work, he doesn’t hate the people he executes, he’s not taking revenge on them, he’s not killing them because they’re in his way or threatening him or attacking him. They’re a matter of such indifference to him that he can kill them as easily as not.”
