The Reader Literary Elements

Fiction

Germany, late 1980s but reminiscing about events in the 1960s and 1939-45 during World War II

Michael Berg is the first-person narrator.

Reminiscing, melancholy, and filled with outrage

Michael is the protagonist. To the other characters, Hanna is the antagonist.

Major conflict involves Hanna being tried for war crimes and her combative attitude towards the judge and prosecution.

Hanna kills herself on the eve of her release from prison.

Hanna's refusal to reveal her illiteracy means that she takes responsibility for writing the document about the number of prisoners who perished, which foreshadows the fact she will be found guilty of war crimes and, as the perceived leader of the guards, given the longest prison sentence.

Michael admits his relationship with Hanna would be looked upon as unusual by others in their town but this is an understatement as it would have been seen as an inappropriate relationship and viewed very harshly.

Michael alludes to Homer's "Odyssey" in reference to judging the purpose of his legal studies.

A plethora of doorbells indicates a plethora of tiny apartments, with tenants moving in and out as casually as you would pick up and return a rented car. There's a computer store on the ground floor where once there were a pharmacy, a supermarket and a video store"

The image painted is one of so-called progress but also suggests that the neighborhood has lost much of what made it a community.

The title of the book, "The Reader", initially refers to Michael, but at the end of the book refers to Hanna.

The surviving daughter draws a parallel between the way in which Hanna destroyed both of their adult lives by what she did to them as children.

The swimming pool is used to collectively describe the friends who go there.

Michael says that whilst sick as a child his carpets, tables and chairs burst out of their normal shapes, giving the furniture the ability to change its own appearance at will.