Rudy

“Most folks think it’s the guilt or rage that destroys us, but I know from experience that it’s the shame that eats us away until we disappear” (Sweat 2017). It never ceases to amaze me how quickly people judge others, write them off as evil, and shun them. Personally knowing someone before they commit a questionable action changes our perceptions of these people. We might then conclude that the person is not evil, that they just performed an evil action. People do terrible things; to expect any better is unrealistic, and to hope for more and weigh our own actions is all we can do. In Der Vorleser ( The Reader ), a novel written by Bernhard Schlink in the 1990s, a young boy and a woman fall in love but are separated. As with perhaps all first loves, the boy becomes obsessed, constantly comparing his other lovers with her and dreaming about her house wherever he travels. As the boy moves through life, he studies law and comes across a case in which the woman is the defendant. The...