PROBLEM OPROŠTAJA U ROMANU „ČITAČ“ BERNHARDA ŠLINKA: IZMEĐU ŽRTVE I ZLOČINCA

Abstract

The paper primarily dealt with the topic of forgiveness in Bernhard Schlink’s novel The Reader. Forgiveness has been discussed from the perspectives of the victims and the perpetrators. A multidisciplinary approach has been applied in the research, namely the moral philosophy has been applied to a particular literary work. The theoretical framework consisted of the following works: Forgiveness and Christian Ethics by Anthony Bash, On Cosmopolitanism and forgiveness by Jacques Derrida, Forgiveness and Should We Pardon Them? by Vladimir Jankélévitch, as well as Getting Even: Forgiveness and Its Limits by Jeffrie G. Murphy. The impossibility of forgiveness in Schlink’s The Reader corresponds with the inability of the perpetrator to grasp the enormity of her crime. Likewise, the forgiveness is (implicitly) being asked from the survivors, something that raises a question of whether anyone has a right to forgive in the name of the dead who are unable to do so (an aporia of itself), which has been one of the hypotheses of the paper.