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What Are The Weaknesses Of The Reader

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In a traditional story, characters that are presented within the story is usually defined certain unique feature. One of those unique features being their strengths and weaknesses. The main character of the story usually doesn’t reveal their strength and weaknesses at the beginning but instead reveal it overtime throughout the novel. The character can either embrace their strength and try to overcome their weaknesses or they could deny it and run from the problem. If the protagonist is going through Joseph Campbell’s Hero Cycle then it is most likely that the protagonist will eventually face hardship and overcome the challenge and his weakness, while at the same time learning something about him/herself. Some story however does not follow the cycle and …show more content…

One such story is seen in Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader. One of The Reader’s main theme and arguably most important is illiteracy. The idea of illiteracy in the novel however is not just literal but also has other implications as well. The use of illiteracy is not only for its literal sense but also for other situations which require “reading” the situation such as personal conversations or social situations. Another implication of literacy could also be the ability to read moral situations and pick the “correct” choice. The moral and literal illiteracy in ‘The Reader’ acts as an important theme and as an vital device to communicate the concept of guilt and redemption.

One of the most important themes in ‘The Reader” is moral and literal literacy. Hanna is a character that is defined by her inability to read. Throughout the novel we are able to observe many of Hanna’s actions that seemed unjustified until the revelation that Hanna couldn’t read which gave us an insight into the motivation and reasoning of her past and future actions. When we discovered Hanna’s illiteracy, we also discovered that Hanna

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