Why are things the way they are?

Hanna Schmitz prefers being read to a sentence for imprisonment for life than letting people discover that she can't read. Its strange how sometimes some of our emotions overpower us in bizarre ways-should I call it irrational, but what would a 'rational person' mean then: homo economicus? Her feeling of shame is so strong that she can accept being branded a Nazi, but not uneducated.

I remember reading Kafka's Trial which portrays a man who thinks that he has done no wrong but still on being charged is filled with guilt and tries everything that can be done to clear himself of the allegations that have been wrongly made about him, only to die without ever knowing what it was that he was charged of and by whom. Though, this angle was opened to me only when I was reading Basu's Prelude to Political Economy. Another similarity is the way Hanna conflates legality and morality that Michael's professor discusses in one of the seminars at the law school. Hanna doesn't understand how she could have done anything wrong when all she had done was stick to the law of the land; Josef K gets so worked up on being charged and his righteous indignation at being alleged of something that smears his otherwise record of obedience only reminds us how people in their lives confuse 'legal' with 'moral', and its not just because "before the law sits a gatekeeper": the individual has an inner feeling of guilt , too, that makes it even easier for the law to overpower her sense of rebellion and revolt.