Hanna died, of despair.
She went to death not because she was afraid of the strange world outside and the coming free life, but because of the complete despair of Michael's future.
Her life was painful and contradictory. In the face of hundreds of Jewish lives, she turned a deaf ear and only knew how to carry out duties and orders. At the same time, she was very loving and sympathetic. When encountering a sick teenager on the roadside, she did not hesitate to lend a helping hand. , Hanna can make Michael feel more love and warmth than Michael's indifferent family. A love no matter what it took root.
After Hanna went to prison, she wasted her time in moderation and numbness. The first time she received a package from Michael, she opened a box of tapes in confusion. When Michael's magnetic and warm voice came from the tape recorder, Hanna pressed the stop button in a panic. She couldn't believe it. His gentle voice will echo in his ears again. But it's true. At night, she fell asleep listening to Michael's voice reading aloud, accompanied by these reading voices that had also whispered in her ears, she must relive the past every night, relive their first encounters, outings in the wild, and relive every time Passion, every beautiful moment, relive the mottled old days when Michael read every book to her affectionately.
The days of falling in love with the young Michael were short but beautiful. The boy fell in love with and owned a woman for the first time, and he enjoyed the lust of his body, reading aloud for his companion, and enjoying her dual roles of mother and lover. Hanna is also happy, but she hides her poverty, age, and cultural inferiority and shame from beginning to end. When Michael came back from his illness to visit and thank Hanna, the casual sentence "I'm sick and bored, and even reading books is boring" deeply hurt her, and complex expressions flashed across her face, when Michael vividly described his During college classes, Hanna listened with great interest, while continuing to hide her inferiority complex and envy, and so on. Perhaps Hanna's lack of psychology and her longing for words hoped to obtain and possess to a certain extent through her possession of Michael, so she almost seduced and had a first relationship with Michael.
As time passed, the inequality in the relationship between the two slowly became apparent. On the surface, Michael loves Hanna almost humbly, to please her, he says The more I suffer, the more I love u, and Hanna always calls Michael a kid dignifiedly, and often loses his temper at him rudely. Facing Michael, Hanna has always been inferior and small in her heart. She was extremely unconfident, but her unconfidence had to be overcome and concealed through Michael's humble pleas for mercy. Only when she had absolute dominance could she feel the value of her existence. In this way, until she was promoted and her illiterate identity was about to be exposed, she chose to leave without saying goodbye under the anxiety.
And the young Michael spent his sweet, painful and cruel adolescence without any choice in this unexpected meeting and parting. When the teenager slipped into the water naked, his youth flew away at that moment as the green lake water covered his body and his head.
A few years later, Michael, who was studying at law school, learned that Hanna had worked for the Nazis. She confessed in court but always took it for granted that she had no remorse for her actions. Michael wept silently. Under the struggle, he was as ashamed to admit that he once fell in love with an executioner just like Hanna was ashamed to admit that he was illiterate. He chose to remain silent and escape. While hiding the facts and emotions, he also locked the door of his heart, never again. One can go in and find out.
The past events of his youth are always etched in his heart. Michael, who has entered middle age, recalls the past fragments in a trance. He began to send Hanna his own reading recordings as a way to commemorate and recall the past. And these recordings made Hanna rekindle hope for life and the future, she began to have sustenance, and at the same time she also began to write letters to Michael, one by one, although they were only words, although he never replied.
However, it is precisely because of her low self-esteem and shame about illiteracy that when the gray-haired Hanna began to learn to read in prison, she probably naively believed that she had gotten rid of the mark of illiteracy and was equal to Michael from now on. But when I saw Michael again, his attitude was indifferent, or it didn't meet Hanna's expectations at all. Michael only talks about helping Hanna in his future life, he doesn't say a word about the past. She finally understood that she was always inferior in front of Michael. No matter how she chased after her, she would always be in the position of being helped and redeemed by Michael. She always believed that Michael was still the kid who loved her dearly. This meeting also made her realize By the time Michael was no longer nostalgic about their former relationship. The successive blows made Hanna lose hope. When all hope faded away, all that was left was despair. Hanna's radiant pupils gradually dimmed, and all her thoughts were ashes. She stepped on the thick stack of books and set foot on the dead The journey, once again without saying goodbye. And, forever.
After Hanna died, Michael cried again. Hanna's death made him re-examine himself, and he finally opened his heart and confided to others for the first time this unknown and shameful love.
You will leave life even more beautiful than you entered it.
Heaven will take you back and look at you and say, only one thing can make a soul complete, and that thing is love
. What I remember is the deep love I once had, even if I was ashamed and hidden for many years.
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