rm or another. Jan Bronski is disappointed that his cousin, Agnes, marries Matzerath because he is in love with her himself. The postal workers at the Polish Post Office are let down by the fact that Jan would desert them, his comrades, at their greatest time of need during the battle. Agnes’ life is a study in disappointment. Her marriage to Mazerath was a sham because she was cheating on him with her cousin. Her son didn’t grow after his 3rd birthday and neither did his mind, supposedly. Both children that she conceived, she could not know for sure who the father was. It was her disappointment about her life that made her commit suicide. It was her death that was one of the greatest disappointments for Oskar, her son. Oskar’s life would hold many more disappointments. Not long after his mother died, his presumptive father, Jan Bronski, was killed for being a part of the Polish Post Office group. Oskar’s first love, Maria Truczinski, held several disappointments in store for him. After they became intimate, she continuously and heartlessly rejected and avoided him and two weeks later, Oskar caught her having sex with his father and no long after that she married Mazerath because she claimed that the child she was carrying was his. Oskar firmly believed that the child was his and was very excited about the idea of having a son follow in his footsteps. When Kurt came, however, Oskar was very disappointed by his son’s unwillingness to follow his wishes. It was the combined frustration of Maria and Kurt that drove Oskar to Bebra’s group of midgets. It was in that group that he met, loved and lost another woman, his beloved Roswitha. In The Reader, Michael also faced the disappointment of losing a woman he loved. The woman he loved was Hanna, who was nearly twice his age at the time of their relationship, and because of her disappointment in his failure to acknowledge her in public was t...
