How Liesel’s Actions Place Her and Others in Dangerous Situations in The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Ugly and Beauty Inside The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a story filled with many emotions that help to bring the characters to life with many of them going through hardships and feelings of great loss. Death states, “I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both” (Zusak 491). The characters in The Book Thief such as Liesel, Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and Max find themselves in situations where they have to act a certain

Life takes place through series of causes and effects. For every decision made, a consequence occurs, either good or bad. In essence, history is an effect, and the consequences of people’s decisions are the cause. Many would say that death is the ultimate consequence. In the eyes of historians, only one period of time can truly express death as a worst-case scenario come true: the Holocaust. After World War 1, Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power in Germany, and the world is still feeling the

1. Title – The Book Thief 2. Author – Markus Zusak 3. Date of Original Publication – 2005 4. Novel Type – Historical Fiction STRUCTURE 1. Point of View – The novel is written in first person omniscient, with Death as the narrator. 2. Relationship to meaning: Being told in Death’s point of view, the narrator’s cynicism and often dark humor gives a reflective stance on Death’s perspective of humans, portrayed through one of the few souls that makes Death question his judgement of humans – Liesel

were deadly to many yet powerful to others. However, to most citizens near camps or marches, they were insignificant and often ignored. In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak introduces marches and camps similar to Dachau to demonstrate how citizens of nearby communities were oblivious to the suffering in those camps during the Holocaust. Much of The Book Thief revolved around a common German family hiding a Jew. During the Holocaust and the book, Jews and other people seen as insignificant were