44 pages • 1 hour read
Geraldine BrooksPeople of the Book
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2008A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Hanna: Vienna, Spring 1996”
In Vienna, elated by the discovery of the butterfly species and its origins, Hanna makes a trip to visit her old mentor, Heinrich. He is an old-world man, exquisitely dressed, who Hanna realizes with a start is getting on in years and looking frailer than when she studied with him after her master’s degree. Hanna talks to Heinrich, drinking tea and eating rich cakes, and the pair discuss the theories of the Haggadah’s location during World War II. Heinrich reveals that many believe the manuscript was kept safe in a mountain village, perhaps in a family known to the kustos. Heinrich also talks about Serif’s life after the war, when he was kept in solitary confinement for six years by the Communists, who claimed he was a Nazi conspirator. Hanna questions this given his legacy of kindness to Jews, and Heinrich reminds her that, “a charge of collaboration was a useful way for the Communists to get rid of anyone who was too intellectual, too religious, too outspoken. He was all of those things” (100). Heinrich then makes a call to the museum in Vienna where documents on the rebinding of the Haggadah are kept, and Hanna leaves for the night.
Later, Hanna calls Ozren, who is friendly and tells her he will look into family connections of the kustos in the mountains. He gives her an update on Alia, and Hanna feels guilty for taking brain scans and getting medical advice for Alia without Ozren’s consent. The next day, at the museum, Hanna examines three different manuscript evaluations. The last one has a crossed-out note, which Hanna deciphers by reading an imprint on the back of the page. It says that the clasps were present in 1894 when the manuscript was rebound. They were made of silver and show a “flower enfolded by a wing” (104).
Chapter 3 Analysis
This chapter takes on grief and the haunting reality of political persecution in the character of Heinrich, a gentle intellectual so haunted by his memories of World War II that he avoids certain parts of his own city, and he refuses to discuss his time as a soldier in Berlin. Hanna notes this, aware of the ways her mentor is haunted by his own grief: “His voice trailed off. We had begun to tread rather close to forbidden territory” (97). In Heinrich, there is yet another perspective on the damaging impact of war on the psyche—in contrast to Ozren, who still lives his grief every day, and the stories of Lola and other now-deceased historical figures in the text, Heinrich is a living example of the decades of trauma and mourning that war leaves behind after it ends.
The theme of political persecution is also present in this chapter, when Heinrich discusses the fate of kustos Serif. He says, “[A] charge of collaboration was a useful way for the Communists to get rid of anyone who was too intellectual, too religious, too outspoken. He was all of those things” (100). This moment is a reminder of the variety of ways that political persecution has appeared historically and continues to appear in politically unstable parts of the world. It also contrasts with modern conceptions of bravery, or how heroes are treated—despite clearly being a hero, and saving not only the Haggadah but also Jewish lives, Serif was deemed an enemy of the state by yet another destructive political entity.
Related Titles
By Geraldine Brooks
