One of the most important issues raised by The Reader is the subjectivity of human justice and the dangers of reducing right and wrong to simplified binary categories.

Hanna's acts are certainly never condoned.

However, the narrative raises questions about her motivation and demonstrates how socio-economic pressures can foster evil regimes. Indeed, as Hanna asserts towards the end of her life, "I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyway, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that". Schlink also presents his readers with different levels of justice and uses the technique of an unreliable narrator, himself recounting unreliable evidence to reveal the fundamental subjectivity of all versions of history. Michael himself is a procrastinator, as he muses: But today I can recognize that events back then were part of a life-long pattern in which thinking and doing have...