But its result had meaing. I had not only lost this fight, I had caved in after a short struggle when she threatened to send me away and withold herself. In the weeks that followed, I didn't fight at all. If she threatened, I instantly and unconditionally surrendered. I took all the blame. I admitted mistakes I hadn't made, intentions I'd never had.
Michael is a fifteen-year-old boy when his relationship with Hanna begins. He is in a kind of developmental no-man's-land, feeling that he is a man but having the world experience of a child. This means that the emotional bullying that Hanna employs to control him is not the kind of relationship that a fifteen year old would normally have, making him much easier to control than a man of her own age. This quote explains how their relationship roles are solidified; Hanna, the controller, bullying, and Michael, taking the line of least resistance in order to appease her and keep the relationship going, no matter what. For her part Hanna does not seem to realise that she is a bully and her attitude comes from a place of necessity, and doing what is the best for her at that moment, rather than from a need to control, bully, or abuse.
At the swimming pool, the shrieks of playing, splashing children reached me as if from far, far away. I moved through the world as if it had nothing to do with me nor I with it. I dived into the milky, chlorinated water and felt no compulsion to surface again. I lay near the others, listening t them, and found what they said silly and pointless.
Michael does not realize that his relationship with Hanna has not only distanced him from his family and friends, but also distanced him from himself, as he no longer wants to participate in the final few carefree years of his childhood. The shrieks and splashes he mentions sound far away, because his childhood is now far away. He is wrapped up in issues of adulthood that his emotions are not yet capable of dealing with. He also seems to be depressed, wanting to sink into the water and never surface. This is a sign that he wants to get away from his feelings and not deal with them. He has also become more like Hanna as one of her main characteristics is her detachment from her own life; this is now rubbing off on him and he is dealing with things the same way she does, by detaching from them.
The prosecutors made an effort to keep up and display the same level of attack day after day. But they didn't succeed, at first because the facts and their outcome as laid out at trial horrified tham so much, and later because the numbness began to take hold. The effect was strangest on the judges and lay members of the court. During the first weeks of trial they took in the horrors - sometimes recounted in tears, sometimes in choking voices, sometimes in agitated or broken sentences - with visible shock or obvious efforts at self-control. Later their faces returned to normal; they could smile and whisper to one another or even show traces of impatience when a witness lost the thread whilst testifying. The other students kept being horrified over again. They only came to the trial once a week and each time the same thing happened, the intrusion of horror into daily life. I, who was in court every day, observed their reactions with detachment.
Again Michael demonstrates his own detachment from his surroundings but his words here also show how something horrible and unimaginable actually starts to lose its impact when it becomes part of the fabric of daily life. The impact on the victims never lessens, and they are forced to live their horror over and over again every day of their lives, but to those on the outside, watching it happen, it becomes normalised because it is not so new, or horrific, after a while. Not only does Michael's detachment illustrate the gradual detachment of those who are in the court on a daily basis but it also enables him to minimise Hanna's actions and her role in a mass murder. He can detach from the horror, and pretend that she did not really understand the consequences of her actions, and even to re-frame their context so that he can in turn minimise his own culpability at loving a murderer. The detachment by familiarity also hints at why the German people who lived through that time were able to put what happened behind them rather than emphasising it as a part of their history that should never be forgotten.
