Michael’s mother Character Analysis in The Reader

Michael’s mother seldom appears in the story, and as Michael’s girlfriend Gesina notes, he rarely mentions her when discussing his past. However, the initiation of Michael’s affair with Hanna evokes in Michael a childhood memory of his mother pampering him with a bath. From what little else the narrator tells us, Michael’s mother often worries about her children.

Michael’s mother Quotes in The Reader

The The Reader quotes below are all either spoken by Michael’s mother or refer to Michael’s mother. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

Guilt, Responsibility, and the Holocaust Theme Icon

). Note: all page numbers and citation info for the quotes below refer to the Vintage edition of The Reader published in 1997.

My mother had pushed a chair up close to the stove for me to stand on while she washed and dressed me. I remember the wonderful feeling of warmth, and how good it felt to be washed and dressed in this warmth. I also remember that whenever I thought back to this afterwards, I always wondered why my mother had been spoiling me like this…Because the woman who didn’t yet have a name in my mind had so spoiled me that afternoon, I went back to school the next day.

Related Characters: (speaker), ,

Page Number and Citation: 28

Explanation and Analysis:

I felt as if we were sitting all together for the last time around the round table under the five-armed, five-candled brass chandelier, as if we were eating our last meal off the old plates with the green vine-leaf border, as if we would never talk to each other so intimately again. I felt as if I were saying goodbye. I was still there and already gone. I was homesick for my mother and father and my brother and sisters, and I longed to be with the woman.

Related Characters: (speaker), , , , , ,

Page Number and Citation: 31

Explanation and Analysis:

I had no one to point at. Certainly not my parents, because I had nothing to accuse them of…. But what other people in my social environment had done, and their guilt, were in any case a lot less bad than what Hanna had done. I had to point at Hanna. But the finger I pointed at her turned back to me. I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her. I tried to tell myself that I had known nothing of what she had done when I chose her. I tried to talk myself into the state of innocence in which children love their parents. But love of our parents is the only love for which we are not responsible.

Related Characters: (speaker), , ,

Page Number and Citation: 169

Explanation and Analysis:

Michael’s mother Character Timeline in The Reader

The timeline below shows where the character Michael’s mother appears in The Reader. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Generational and Parent-Child Conflict Theme Icon

...woman walks Michael to his building on Blumenstrasse. When Michael is home, he tells his mother about his sickness and the woman who helped him. His mother calls a doctor, who... (full context)

Secrets, Indifference, and Emotional Distance Theme Icon

...her…by facing up to it.” He then recollects an early childhood memory in which his mother gave him a warm bath. As his room was unheated, he viewed that bath as... (full context)

...that he had gotten lost, and announces that he will be returning to school. Michael’s mother reminds him of the doctor’s recommendation to wait an additional three weeks, but turns to... (full context)

Michael’s father “looked thoughtful, the way he always did when [his] mother talked to him about the children or the household,” and Michael wonders if his father... (full context)

...strangeness of Michael’s proposal, which included the suggestion that they rent a room together as mother and son. Whenever the teenage Michael had gone out with his mother, he was embarrassed... (full context)

...that he had earlier proposed. The narrator then wonders excuse what he had told his mother and father, but he cannot remember. (full context)

...his trip with Hanna, Michael does remember what he had to do to convince his mother and father to let him stay home alone for the last week of his vacation... (full context)

...freedom and dignity. As an example, his father points to Michael’s boyish anger that his mother made all his decisions, saying, “Philosophy has forgotten about children…the way I forget about you.”... (full context)

However, Michael feels that he has no one else to blame, especially not his mother and father, whom he is now embarrassed to have condemned during his concentration camps seminar.... (full context)