How far can Bernhard Schlink's novel 'The Reader' be understood as an Essay

How far can Bernhard Schlink's novel 'The Reader' be understood as an examination of the role played by history in the construction of cultural identities - Essay Example By paralleling these events and the consequences for one nation of people, Schlink makes the point that history contributes to the construction of cultural identities. Schlink speaks through Michael Berg, the narrator of the first part of his novel The Reader. Through Berg, the idea of guilt by association transcend to mark the cultural identity of post war Germany. Berg writes: While acknowledging the Third Reich’s active role in the atrocities of World War II, and his acquiescent complicity under the auspices of the Third Reich, Berg is also accepting that the entire nation of Germans has been stained by the war crimes. â€Å"It did not just apply to what had happened in the Third Reich. The fact that Jewish gravestones were being defaced with swastikas, that so many old Nazis had made careers in the courts, the administration, and the universities, that the Federal Republic did not recognize the state of Israel for many years, that emigration and resistance were handed down as traditions less often than a life of conformity—all this filed us with shame, even when we could point at the guilty parties.† (Schlink, 169-170) All of the countries attributes, past and present are skewered by recollections of this unpleasant past. In this way, Germans can rarely take pride as a culture in their accomplishments and if and when they do, that pride is fractured by the collective guilt and shame that blemishes the country’s history. Berg’s love affair with and his feelings for Hanna an SS guard are symbolic of the dilemma for Germans cultural identity. The following excerpt from The Reader is demonstrative of this kind of cultural symbolism: â€Å"The worst were the dreams in which a hard, imperious, cruel Hanna aroused me sexually; I woke from them fill of longing and shame and rage. And full of fear about who I really was.† (Schlink, 47) Berg’s feeling for