The Reader: Embracing Reading, Denying Writing

Abstract

The Reader deals extensively with both writing and reading, and has one major character whose illiteracy is pivotal to its plot. The degree to which reading is at its centre is reflected in the fact that the words of the title could be used to describe any of the three major roles in the film, a young man who reads, an older man who returns to reading, a woman who learns to read. The film is based on a well-received novel by Bernhard Schlink, written in German and published in 1995,¹ which deals with some of the significant subjects of post-war German literature: the relations between the war-time and the post-war generations, and the nature and presence of the memory of the Holocaust. An English translation of the novel appeared in 1997.² Stephen Daldry’s film, produced by Mirage Enterprises and the Weinstein Company in 2008, while it reproduces the central plot of the novel, also departs from its source in many respects, adding or reimagining some characters and diminishing the attention paid to others.³ It also has substantially different interests, as I shall go on to argue. It is not part of my project specifically to look at the film as an adaptation, so I shall generally be referring to changes only when they seem to throw light on its procedures.