The Reader, by Bernard Schlink, ends with its narrator (Michael Berg) musing about the writing of the story he's just finished telling. He says he's started writing a number of times, and has taken different approaches, but this is the story that wanted to be told. He then tries to make sense of why he had to tell the story.
It's kind of a fascinating ending because the narrator is inviting us to look at the motivations underlying his decision to tell us the story in this way. Throughout the novel, he has hidden most of his motivations from us. The epilogue (if I can call it that) makes explicit that Michael himself may not understand his motivations and may tell himself one thing while having a different underlying reason.
It also invites the reader to ask why do we think the narrator recorded this? Why do we think he recorded it in this way, with these things included and other aspects excluded? It's a neat construction that would start a discussion without need of a book club checklist at the end. And once you start to ask those questions about why the story was told this way, and what motivates the narrator, it prompts the deeper questions about the narrator's actions and motivations throughout the novel.
The narrator indicates he wrote it initially to try to be free of the hold these memories had upon him, an exorcism of sorts. He said that didn't work. Then he tried to write it to hold onto and rediscover his memories relating to the story, but that didn't work. Then when he put it aside for a while, it came back to him as a story that needed telling, perhaps in the same way that he needed to create the tapes he read (arguably a matter of self-indulgence). Then he reevaluates to consider that perhaps it was what he needed to be free... though I wouldn't say the ending leaves me feeling as though the narrator has any greater sense of freedom than he had before.
So why did he write it the way he did? It's a curiously distant yet internalized novel. He does not engage in much speculation on the motivations of Hannah, and other than a brief attempt to understand his father, spends virtually no time considering any other people. He doesn't talk about his ex-wife in any detail, nor about their meeting, how he fell in love with her or any other matters. I'm fairly certain more text is given to unnamed lovers than to the woman he married and with whom he had a child. He spares a sentence or two for his daughter as a token nod to the obligatory affection he understands he's supposed to feel, but she takes up no space in the story. Siblings, friends, the nature of his work, his mother, none of these get any time in the story, and yet the story is all about the narrator, all from his perspective. Yet it has distance to it. Whenever he feels he may be getting too close to his own feelings and thoughts he backs away. When he visits the concentration camp, the perspective jumps such that he's not remembering his visit as a young man, but his subsequent visit many years later, to further remove himself from the feelings he had at the time.
So why does the story have this construction focused on himself while avoiding examination of his relationships with people and the world around him? Is it because he's extremely self involved, and has no room in his thoughts for anyone except himself and the impact that Hannah made on him? Or that he's treating this story as pure self-indulgence or exorcism and is excising every part of his thoughts except for that involving his relationship with Hannah?
For myself, I think it's a combination of both. I think Michael feels that his relationship with Hannah cast a shadow over his entire life, and some part of his mind is always analyzing it, turning it over, and looking at it, to the point that it overwhelms the rest of his life and interactions with other people. His mind can't let it go, and he hopes by writing that it lets him leave some of it behind.
So what story is he telling then? I have to think it's more than a bare recitation of his perception of historical fact, though I think it's very intentional that he leaves his own thoughts and feelings out of the story where he can. Partly that's because the narrator doesn't share feelings with people, and partly it's that he wants to present an objective account. That's what makes it feel like a confession to me. That he has a need to expiate his guilt or Hannah's guilt, and thinks that this story is the best way to do it. I think he's told the story in a way that was intended to show him, or Hannah, in the best possible light, but somehow the story took over and didn't do that the way he intended. Whenever the facts start to show him in a poor light, or seem to beg for an examination of his own conscience or motives, he backs away, as though he doesn't dare look too closely at what he has done or why he did it.
So is it an apologia for himself, or for Hannah? I haven't decided, but I think it's Michael's story. I think he's trying to explain and justify himself, and perhaps have a story, if not of forgiveness, of understanding. I wonder if perhaps he can't reach an understanding of his own motivations, so is looking to us as readers to do so.
Trying to avoid explicit spoilers, at the very end of the novel I think it's significant that he says he only visited Hannah once, and explicitly withholds the information about whether he gave her the letter addressed to her and thanking her for the donation. Somehow I don't think he did. I think he withheld that absolution for her. Which leaves me with the question, is he leaving it for us (the readers) to absolve Hannah? Is that the understanding and forgiveness the story seeks to achieve? I don't think so. I think he intentionally withholds absolution for her, and doesn't think we are in a position to grant it in his place.
The story has been internal and has been crafted to show a pattern of self indulgence on the part of Michael. As he depicts himself, he doesn't consider anyone else's feelings, and doesn't seem to live for anything but his memories. In working through those memories, he came to an understanding of Hannah (though always well after the time the understanding could have made any impact). And he withheld from Hannah the knowledge that he had that understanding, since understanding would lead to empathy, and from empathy to forgiveness. He ends the novel (like the author in New York), still unprepared to offer Hannah that forgiveness.
And yet he wants understanding from us readers for his actions. He's not quite prepared to ask absolution for himself, but tries, throughout the story, to present himself in an objective, distant way, without delving into all his internal justifications, to see if we can understand him, like he ultimately understood Hannah. The question for the readers, I think, is whether we are prepared to offer him forgiveness or whether we would withhold that from him. And if we withhold it, then perhaps we've arrived at a perfect understanding of his actions. Which is perhaps why he told the story.
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