Bernhard Schlinks Roman The Reader im nordamerikanischen ...

Arendt’s thesis on the “banality of evil,” the question of how to deal with the Holocaust (film
versus literature), and whether the Holocaust is part of the American discourse. Furthermore,
the novel also contributes to the North American Holocaust discourse: on the one hand, The
Reader follows the American discourse by giving another story and leading to a further
popularisation of the Holocaust; on the other hand, the novel adds something new to the
discourse, namely an individual view of perpetrators and a differentiated way of dealing with
them.
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