By admitting to her illiteracy, Hanna can essentially save herself. But her pride and her person prevent that admittance. Like we talked about in class, Michael is an unreliable narrator that tells the story subjectively and really emphasizes Hanna's illiteracy in order to generate sympathy for Hanna. Instead of putting her illiteracy at fault for the situation she's in, we can also look at Hanna like many of Michael's peers looked at their parents - by condemning her to shame. Even if Hanna was illiterate and couldn't get a better job than a guard at a camp, does that mean she had the right to be an active participant in the Holocaust?
Unlike how some of Michael's peer's parents were passive members of society while the Holocaust was happening, Hanna was a guard at a camp and she, according to some people, can be held accountable for the death of those women in the church. Setting her illiteracy and the circumstances that made her a guard aside, did Hanna have the right to keep the door of the church locked or was she indifferent to her morals, and thinking only on the basis of following orders? And did she have a right to disregard morals just to do her job?
Just because Hanna was illiterate does not give her the right to become an active participant in the Holocaust. We learn that she held many other jobs before and after she was a guard. Even though she was illiterate, she still found work which means she did not have to take the job as a guard.
ReplyDeleteSetting that aside, even though she did take the job that does not give her the right to abandon morals and let innocent people suffer simply because she was "doing her job." If Hanna wanted to she could have let the women go, but instead she let them burn alive. If she had such sympathy for the weaker girls in the camp that she allowed them to read to her in their last days, why didn't she have sympathy for all the women when she knew the church was on fire, and if she unlocked the doors they could escape? Even if Hanna was just trying to do her job out of fear of not finding another one because of her illiteracy, she still could have found a way to let the women go.