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It takes a long time for Michael to know the truth in Hanna. She has always
been insincere and not genuine. She keeps her secret, her reasons of everything even until her death.
g. Antisocial
An antisocial person is unwilling to meet people and talk to them, this behavior shows a lack of concern for other people. Still by the mannerism as the
way to indicate a character of a person in a novel, Hanna in The Reader is seen as an antisocial person. Horney in his psychoanalytic theory says that difficulties
arise from conflicts between a person and his environment p. 121. The person will develop a basic anxiety and try to protect herself by various defenses p. 122.
Here Hanna withdraws herself from public and protects herself by living in her own small world. Antisocial people live for the moment, forgetting the past, and
not planning the future, they do not thinking ahead what consequences their actions will have. Once Michael is imagining how his relationship with Hanna
might be in five or ten years, he then asks Hanna how she imagines it, ―She didn‘t even want to think ahead to Easter‖ p. 40.
Even though Hanna builds a relationship with Michael, for her this is relationship in name only. Her antisocial behavior makes the relationship be
without depth or meaning, it can be seen by her lack of remorse toward Michael, also including marriages she never has. The relationship is ended when it suits
her, as she leaves Michael at the summer season without saying goodbye and without letting anybody know her reason p. 79-81.
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During the trial, Michael can also see Hanna‘s antisocial behavior through her manners toward her lawyer and toward the other defendants which once are
her partners and friends in the camp. During the breaks Hanna never moves from her seat to talk to anyone.
―...as did the fact that she didn‘t talk to the other defendants and almost never with her lawyer either. However, as the trial went on, the other
defendants talked less among themselves too. When there were breaks in the proceedings, they stood with relatives and friends, and in the mornings
they waved and called hello to them when they saw them in public benches. During the breaks Hanna remained in her seat.‖ p. 100.
The antisocial behavior continues until Hanna is imprisoned. The condition
of her antisocial is told by the warden of the prison to Michael after her death. ―...Then a few years a go she gave up. She had always taken care of
herself personally, she was slender despite her strong build, and meticulously clean. But now she began to eat a lot and seldom washed; she
got fat and smelled. She didn‘t seem unhappy or dissatisfied. In fact it was as though the retreat to the convent was no longer enough, as though life in
the convent was still too sociable and talkative, and she had to retreat even further, into a lonely cell safe from all eyes, where looks, clothing, and
smell meant nothing. No it would be wrong to say that she had given up. She redefined her place in a way that was right for her, but no longer
impressed the other women.‖ p. 208.
In all the year when Hanna is imprisoned, she is respected by other women
prisoner. She is asked for advices for problems happening there, she intervenes in an argument and her decisions are accepted. At one time she feels that the life in
the prison she considers the prison as a convent is too sociable for her, as stated above in the cutoff of the novel; she then takes a decision which is right for her.
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She withdraws herself with her own way to her world, the lonely cell.
B. The Description of Hanna Schmitz’s Inferiority Complex
