Death Is Human Too: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Essay

One of The Book Thief’s main themes is war and the cruelty humans can have towards each other. Death exemplifies this theme all throughout the book through various metaphors and statements. “No one wanted to bomb Himmel Street. No one would bomb a place named after heaven, would they? Would they?” (p. 497-498).

Death, the narrator of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is an imperfect character. He certainly has ideals for himself, makes them evident, and strives to fulfill them within the novel. Through the use of foreshadowing in The Book Thief, Markus Zusak, speaking through Death, transforms the reader’s emotional response to events in the book to be similar to Death’s ideal emotional response. This can be supported through examining Death’s ideals, his use of foreshadowing, and their combined effect on the reader’s emotional response to tragic events in the text.

In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, suffering can be seen throughout the book.”Individuals can endure great suffering if they have something to live for”. There are various types of sufferings presented in the book like physical and emotional. Max Vandenburg a Jewish man who hides in the Hubermann’s basement and the conditions and distress he had to go through to stay hidden from the Nazis. Also suffering is shown when Max had lost his family was very miserable and cruel.

In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, main character Liesel struggles to maintain the innocence of her childhood while combating the beliefs and hardships of living in Nazi Germany. The most predominant theme in this book was the use of fear and its complete and pure power when combined with death. As Mark Twain once said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” This quote truly explains the essence of The Book Thief, the fundamental reason being that death was the narrator. Which from start to finish, displayed the fears of a multitude of different people and how they see death, but more importantly how death sees them.

Billy Collins’ and Markus Zusak’s personifications of death both interact with humans. The nature of these interactions, however, reveal a stark contrast in their personalities and their tasks as Death. In “My Number”, Collins writes Death through the eyes of a paranoid man who fear Death and plans out his future encounters with this nefarious character. Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, is told through the eyes of the compassionate and empathetic Death himself; who describes his

“I’ve seen so many young men over the years who think they’re running at other young men. They are not. They’re running at me,” Death says. This quotation means that a lot of young men (I’m assuming soldiers) fight and go into battle thinking that they’re going to fight with other soldiers and survive, but they’re basically running to their deaths. This is significant because it helps to tell more of Hans Hubermann’s backstory and what happened to him pre-Liesel. It also reveals a little bit what fighting in World War II was like. This quote connects to the emerging themes of death and war because it is about mortality and fighting other people in a war. This passage impacts me by making me think about death and how many soldiers die while fighting (which is something that I don’t think about often).

What is the first thing you think about when you hear the word death? In most cases, people fear death but as the narrator in Markus Zusak’s novel, The Book Thief, Death is a compassionate and honorable character.

Narration is important in almost any book,  which is why it is especially important in   Mark Zusak’s: The Book Thief.  He uses foreshadowing, perspective, and interaction with the  reader to make the book so much more interesting. Zusak's selection of Death as the narrator heavily changes and alters the way the book is read. Death allows the reader to have a completely new and different perspective of Death itself, he heavily foreshadows very important events in the book, and he interacts with the reader many times throughout the book. By presenting death as the narrator, Zusak provides a more outside and impartial view of humanity’s pain and suffering (Johnson).

The theme of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief is an ironic one. During the time of World War II, where everyone is trying to live on this novel’s main character is death himself. Death loves metaphors so much, it appears that he even thinks in them. His words have both positive and negative meanings. One of the first metaphors is found at the very beginning of the novel. He explains about what bothers him about his job. He says, “I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise.” (5). Death explains that the hardest part of his job is not taking the souls who have already deceased but watching the one who barely made it. Watching the ones who are left behind in the mess, the “jigsaw puzzle”. They must cope with the loss of their loved ones. The Holocaust was a grueling time, where no one knew what to expect, almost like a puzzle.

Death. To many, it is the end of life and start of a new beginning from this world, but in The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Death is our narrator. He is the one who guides us through the life of a young German girl named Liesel during Nazi Germany. Death manages to see her three times, and soon enough, becomes fascinated by her and the trials she must face in her life. Liesel manages to change Death’s character, surprising him in a way he thought humans never could and changing his viewpoint on them forever.

The acts of human nature can become a very difficult concept to understand. Markus Zusak uses Death throughout the The Book Thief to express the complexity of human nature. Death illustrates how complicated beings humans are and how they hold the capacity to act in both evil and beautiful ways. Throughout the novel Death helps give readers insight to the ignorance displayed and the pain it may cause a person. In the most troublesome and discriminatory times of the Holocaust, Death will point out the beautiful acts of compassion carried out by characters involved in the novel. Sometimes beauty and pain is mixed within the sacrifice some make for those they love and are loyal to.

Black, white, and red are the most important colors in, The Book Thief. I believe that one theme that is repeated shown are these three colors. They are used to visualize different scenarios in the eyes of Death. They help him have a vacation from all the mayhem of murders and work of taking people’s soul. Red, symbolizes the scenario of murder and destruction. White, on the other hand, symbolizes innocence and black, the final color, symbolizes the sadness and mourning.

3. The Book Thief offers a unique characterization of Death by making him appear as someone who does not enjoy his job. He describes himself as having a tough boss at his shoulder, hissing “Get it done, get it done.” He is constantly trying to avoid becoming emotionally attached to any of the people he has to work with and around, particularly the survivors, and has to distract himself by focusing on

In the novel The Book Thief written by Marcus Zusak, Max found himself in a situation where the propaganda that Hitler has set affected his life in many ways. With the help of Liesel’s words and reading and the care that the Hubermanns gave, Max grew stronger and he had the courage to stand up and protect himself from the force that Hitler had set against the him and the Jews. By having the his power of will, Max was fighting Hitler in his own circumstances even if it 's just in his imagination.

It’s interesting to see Death’s perspective and view on humans change throughout the book. At the beginning, it was almost sarcastic or lighthearted but at the end it realizes how terrible the human race actually is. “I am haunted by the humans” was the last line of the novel and it is such a hard hitting sentence (Zuask 550).