Michael in Bernhard Schlink’s, The Reader
Michael follows the course of the judicial process with a lot of attention and you can see clearly how he processes the time with Hanna on his walks on Sundays and in his free time. Here, it is primarily the walk in the forest, when he is at the spot where he and Hanna had previously took their bike tour years before. He also remembers clearly how Hanna gives up herself because of her fear of the exposure of her illiteracy more and more during the process. Michael is now able to explain many of her strange behaviors, such as the missing note in the hotel or Hanna’s job change from Siemens to the SA.
As a result, the distance between the two becomes larger and Michael can get over her because her “lack of transparency”, which made her interesting to him, is gone. As a reader, you maybe feel a positive feeling when all these pieces of her puzzle are revealed during the court process.