Loneliness

Loneliness casts a constant shadow over all the characters of The Reader on the 6.27, and their separate struggles to overcome a problem which can only be solved through community effort constitute one of the major themes of the novel. Loneliness manifests in the novel as an almost physical pain, hindering the characters’ day-to-day lives and draining them of meaning and imagination. Ironically, isolation is portrayed as hardly a solitary condition; almost every single character, however sympathetic or important, suffers from it to some degree. It is a condition that is possible even in a large city like Paris, where the abundance of strangers and co-workers in fact leads to greater isolation than in a more rural, closely-knit community. Many like Guylain emotionally insulate themselves as a way of coping with the anxiety and depression created by their demanding, draining jobs, but ironically this leads to even...