Essay on Death is Humanity: Markus Zusak's The Book Thief

The Book Thief is a historical fiction novel by Markus Zusak set in Munich, Germany during the Nazi reign from 1936-1943. The novel incorporates a main character that is, in the beginning, an innocent child who doesn't understand the world and takes her on a journey where she grows up and matures through the hardships and challenges of her life. The story is narrated by the character Death, who is a fresh take on the Grim Reaper, only wearing the black cloak when it's cold and never carries a syte. Death describes the life Liesel Meminger, an orphaned girl who witnesses her brother's death and burial and finds herself being adopted by the benevolent old couple, the Hubermanns. The rest of the story follows Liesel's journey through her incredibly challenging life with the Hubermanns and characters such as Rudy, The mayor's wife, and Max helping her along. Symbolism in The Book Thief deepens the story by conveying many different ideas and emotions that supports the reader's understanding of the story. This is especially apparent with the use of the gravediggers to help the reader remember characters, the use of color to help the reader feel the proper emotions and remember the correct events, and the use of Liesel's changing feelings about Rudy to convey how Liesel grows and matures through the book.

These behaviors impact the way many view Germany during this time period. The Book Thief, written by Markus Zusak, also takes place during this time. It focuses on a girl named Liesel, her family, her friend Rudy, a Jew named Max, and Death. The author personifies Death as the narrator of Liesel’s story, living in Nazi Germany during WWII.

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.

The Book Thief, is a Death narrated novel by Markus Zusak. The story takes place in Nazi Germany, 1939, where Liesel Meminger arrives on Himmel Street to start a new life with her foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. She lives to a very old age and when Death finally comes to take her away, he wants to tell Liesel about beauty and brutality. But what could he tell her about beauty and brutality that she didn’t know, the Book Thief had lived through it all. The time she saw Max marching to Dachau, the time Rudy went into the Amper River to save The Whistler, and the final moments she spent with Mama. Liesel Meminger’s life had always represent beauty in the wake of brutality.

Death’s detailing and descriptions of his soul gathering in the war and his human-like emotions further to the conclusion that is Death being or resembling humans. By Death saying “Far away, fires were burning…I had just picked up 200 murdered souls” (Zusak, 478), he discusses and implies his soul gathering and subtle emotions about what it is like to be Death. In Death saying “murdered souls”, Death shows the emotion of compassion towards the Jews being slaughtered in WWII. Death uses his experience as a gateway to express his inner feelings toward the situation with Liesel Meminger. By Death saying “I was on my way to Molching for more [souls]” (Zusak, 478), it effectively shows the connection in which is the third time Liesel and Death are united. This further depicting that Death uses his personal experiences of and with Liesel Meminger and War to express his true colors. In a final attempt to completely share his ideas,

Part One: Compare and contrast this persona of Death with the familiar personification of the Grim Reaper. How is Death from The Book Thief like the Grim Reaper, and how is he significantly different?

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 Book Thief is a historical novel written by Markus Zusak. It provides the readers a deeper understanding of the lives of Jews and Germans in Germany during the brutal Nazi regime and how they manage to survive. This includes not only the physical survival of the fittest, but also the survival of their moral beliefs. In addition to the author’s theme of inhumanity and humanity of man, he provides a background story for the characters in the book and how they are similar and different by their moral beliefs, their goals, their guilt, and their relationship with words. Two of the characters that are mentioned throughout the book to remind the readers of their struggles to survive in the Third Reich are Liesel and Max. Liesel is the foster daughter of Hans and Rosa Hubermann and “the book thief” who realizes the power of words in the Nazi community while Max is a fist fighter and German Jew who hides in Hans’s basement to escape from Nazi incarceration and eventually survives the concentration camp after he is arrested on his way to Stuttgart by the Nazis. Liesel and Max can be compared and contrasted through analyzing their struggles, includes their fear of the death, their guilt of

The book 's importance is explained through Death where ‘“The books meaning 1. The last time she saw her brother. 2. The last time she saw her mother.” Despite Liesel being illiterate, the Gravedigger’s handbook holds significant meaning for the character. Liesel has an overwhelming feeling of loss of control and acts out in rebellion to steal the book that lay beside her brothers grave. By stealing the book, she has a reminder of her small family and it stops her feeling defeated by her ever changing life, which she has no control over. This idea is then reinforced with another action of the character. Liesel then finds out that Hitler was the cause of the suffering and loss of freedom of the people she loved and knew in her life.This second act of rebellion takes place while Liesel visits a Nazi book burning. Liesel soon understands that the Nazi’s burnt books to brainwash citizens of Germany(_____). As a result of this Lisel then understands the importance and power words have, causing her to again acts rebelliously in a protest. “And it was anger and dark hatred that had fueled her desire to steal it.” This passage from the novel shows the emotions of Liesel. As a character who is unable to express herself verbally, her actions speak for her. Liesel 's desire to understand words begins to grow, with her understanding that Nazis burn books in fear of what they may do to society.

Throughout the first part of the book, Death is like one could imagine; indifferent and distant. He carries on with his job, carrying souls to their afterlife and seeking the color of the sky after a person’s death as his only distraction, and much like his job, his persona is very straightforward. He tells the reader, “Here is a small fact. You are going to die” (Zusak 3) and immediately, he appears as blunt and detached. He feels no obligation to sugar coat words, says that “nice has nothing to do with [him]” (Zusak, 3), and prefers to be frank and straightforward when expressing a message. “I wanted to explain that I am constantly overestimating and underestimating the human race - that rarely do I simply estimate it” (Zusak, 550). Once again, Death manages to not only be direct but also able to state in a few words how little he sometimes thinks of humans. To some humans, he doesn't even give a second glance, but to those he does, he often thinks the worst of them. This, along with his blunt nature, shows who he is and how he thinks of humanity.

11 million people died during the Holocaust. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Liesel Meminger loses many of her loved ones. At the beginning of the book, Liesel’s brother dies of illness on a train, and her mother is taken away by the Nazis for being a communist. After losing everyone she ever cared about, the story drags Liesel into a humble household where she discovers her passion for books, and her love for her family and friends. However, her loved ones are once again torn away from her as Himmel Street, the street she lives on, gets bombed. She loses her foster parents, her best friend, and everyone else she came to know. As a result of these adverse events, Liesel’s innocence was stolen from her. In The Book Thief, loss plays an essential role in developing characters, especially Liesel. After losing Werner, her brother, Liesel is plagued by

What is the Grim Reaper? Who is Death in The Book Thief? Both of these figures have things that make them alike and things that make them unique. Some similarities between the personas of both are that both of their roles were to collect the souls of the dead, they were both personified in many different ways and both could never be fully human. As much as the characters are similar to each other, there are quite a few things that make themselves unique. One is that Death acts as a person even though he could never actually be a person. He can convey emotions such as sympathy, pain and anger which are shown throughout the first part of the novel. Also, Death is only around to collect the souls of those readily to die, whereas Grim Reaper hunts down the souls of innocent people and takes their life. “...The boy’s spirit was soft and cold, like ice cream. He started melting in my arms. …” (pg. 21)

Throughout the years of living in Nazi Germany, she had experienced events unimaginable for a child to even witness. Liesel witnessed her younger brother die. She saw a young war soldier commit suicide by hanging himself. He was her neighbour. She had watched an enemy bomber pilot die in a plane crash near her house. "She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched into a concentration camp. And at the center of all of it, she saw the Fuhrer [Hitler] shouting his words and passing them around" (Zusak 521). Liesel despised Hitler and his words. He destroyed people with his words while she stole them back. At one point, she didn't even want words to exist anymore because "without words, the Fuhrer was nothing" (Zusak

“The Book Thief” presented a story filled with various themes that comprised a powerful plot line. Although there were many themes in the story, there was one that stood out to me more than others. In the process of reading the book, the theme of suffering affected me the most. The definition of the word suffer is to experience or be subjected to something bad or unpleasant. Different characters within the story are subjected to dreadful feelings and are therefore suffering. Through my analyzation, I observed the three different types of suffering that the characters experienced: guilt, feelings of emptiness, and anxiety. The characters of “The Book Thief” experience these three types of suffering in different ways.

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.