The Curse Of Illiteracy as a Motif
Illiteracy is a motif throughout the novel and is always the one factor that seems to offer Hanna the chance to completely ruin her life at every stage of it. Worse than that, it also prompts her to become a prison guard, and destroy the lives of innocent people as well. Hanna is ashamed of her illiteracy and because of this, it is the one thing about her that underpins everything that happens in the book. Her relationship with Michael continues for far longer than it might have done, because she likes him to read aloud to her. It ends abruptly with her leaving, because she has been offered a promotion, but taking it will reveal to her bosses that she cannot read. As a younger woman, Hanna was offered a promotion at the Siemens factory where she worked, but again, anxious to keep the illiteracy a secret, she signed up to be a prison guard with the SS, avoiding admitting why she couldn't accept the promotion. Finally, it is also the factor that makes her seem more culpable than her fellow defendants in court as not only could she not read the charges against her, but she admitted to writing notes she could not have written due to her illiteracy. Throughout the novel it is the motif that shows how Hanna's life could have been very different had she been able to admit she could not read and get some help with the problem earlier.
Reading Aloud as a Symbol
Michael continues to read aloud to Hanna on cassette long after she has learned to read, and her new found abilities are apparent to him. His need to continue to read aloud is a symbol of his need to still be needed by her, and of him wanting to retain the upper hand in the one area of their relationship in which he felt that he was at an advantage, or had any control at all.
Stockings
Michael became infatuated with Hanna when he saw her slowly and deliberately rolling down her stockings. Consequently in order to feel any attraction within a new relationship he needs to have his companion wear stockings in the same way, not, as they imagine, as some erotic foreplay, but because love and infatuation for Michael are all associated with Hanna, and his first relationship. He needs to have the same image in front of him in order to feel anything at all and not remain detatched from the woman he is with.
Tea Canister as a Symbol
When Michael takes Hanna's money to the surviving daughter, she has little interest in it, and seems vaguely disgusted by the idea of accepting it. She does, however, keep the little tea canister that the money was kept in. She tells Michael that she used to have one similar as a child, before going into the camp, and she kept little precious mementoes of loved ones and special times inside it. It was of course taken from her at the camp. She keeps Hanna's canister as it symbolises everything that she loved that was taken from her as a child because of the camp, and also it symbolises that debt that Hanna needs to repay that has nothing to do with money.
Going Back To School as a Symbol
Michael makes the decision himself that he will go back to school after recovering from hepatitis. He doesn't consult his family over the decision and the fact that it is accepted, and he has "self governed" for the first time symbolizes to him his coming of age, and the moment at which he made the transition from child to adult. Previously he had gone to school because he had to, but now, he decided to, outside of any parental instruction. He traces his feelings of having grown up, and of leaving his childhood and family behind, to this symbolic moment of his youth.
