Symbolic Significance Of ' The Thief And The Dogs '

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.

1) Prescribed Text – The Book Thief a. Compose a summary/synopsis of the text (plot/themes/characters/key concerns). (100 words only)

The Book Thief, written by Australian novelist Markus Zusak, follows a young girl living in Nazi Germany, and employs innovative techniques to convey the central idea of the extremes of human behavior. This central idea was explored through stylistic techniques and conventions such as Death as the narrator, juxtaposition, irony, lack of chronological order, narrative voices, and themes, namely the power of words.

Between the two books of different genres, a reader is opened up to different circumstances of two people. During the Holocaust, there were those who lived through the terror in Nazi Germany under Hitler's reign, and those who suffered from the work of Nazi’s ending up inside compact concentration camps. Within the book Night by Elie Wiesel and the book The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the Holocaust period was a key factor. Both the books stress the idea of the Holocaust, however are portrayed in very different ways. With the stories being told from different perspectives the true feelings of the Holocaust are understood and the similarities between all people are shown.

“The Book Thief,” is a No.1 International Best-selling novel by Markus Zusak. In the two chapters: “The Long walk to Dachau” and “Peace,” the themes of cruelty and kindness are strongly portrayed through many literary techniques and other ways. My analysis on this question is to see how and why these two themes are illustrated in the two chapters, and under what circumstances they chose to behave like that.

The Book Thief is set in the time of World War 2 where the Holocaust is present and disaster is everywhere. Throughout the story, Liesel, the main character, learns that words are extremely powerful and hold the ability for people to use them for good or for evil. Among the disaster and altercations, Liesel uses her literature to comfort her and make herself more powerful due to her knowledge, which demonstrates the theme of the story, the comfort and power of literature and words softens the pain of loss.

The first night's story in Arabian Nights is that of the Merchant and the Demon. Told by Shahrazad, the story offers a remarkable parallel to her own situation as she faces immanent death. Thus, the story of the Merchant and the Demon is told as a parable within the frame story, presenting a poignant analogy for Shahrazad's own situation. The Merchant and the Demon is a short tale but one filled with themes such as power, guilt, justice, and moral responsibility. Through the clever analogy with her own situation, Shahrazad also explores the theme of creative problem solving in tricky situations. Moreover, the story illustrates the core differences between pre-Islamic and Islamic values in Arabian society. Because the theme of gender roles and norms are not present within the Merchant and the Demon, the story shows how sexism is simply a form of general political and social oppression.

Beneath the gore and smoke and loam, this book is about the evanescence of life, and why some men choose to fill their brief allotment of time engaging the impossible, others in the manufacture of sorrow. In the end it is a story of the ineluctable conflict between good and evil, daylight and darkness, the White City and the Black. (Larson

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.

Automatically, the reader knows that serious issues are about to be discussed and that the outcome may not be positive. This novel challenges the material ideology discussed above. It does this by bringing the issues to the forefront and reporting on them in a fictitious yet realistic manner. The reader is not led to believe that the ending will be happy, he is supposed to expect the consider the harsh realities of the world throughout the piece.

Brutality and Beauty are both aspects of the human spirit and therefore are evident in society and have been through the ages. History can be examined to bring forth examples of both, often side by side, often in times of great destruction such as in times of war. In the novel, The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak explores and compares the juxtaposition between great brutality and beauty in the human spirit evident in the German town of Molching during WW2. The author demonstrates how the characters in the novel can overcome cruelty and ruthlessness with acts of extraordinary kindness and humaneness. This is shown through the novel with Max and Liesel’s friendship, when Hans gives one of the Jewish camp prisoners a piece of bread and when Rosa and Hans protect Max from the Nazis. Zusak illustrates that a human’s capacity for hope is difficult to destroy regardless of the circumstances.

“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.

When the narrator first encounters the girl, his friend's older sister, he can only see her silhouette in the “light from the half-opened door”. This is the beginning of his infatuation with the girl. After his discovery, he is plagued by thoughts of the girl which make his daily obligations seem like “ugly, monotonous, child's play”. He has become blinded by the light. The narrator not only fails to learn the name of his “girl”, he does not realize that his infatuation with a woman considerably older than himself is not appropriate. He relishes in his infatuation, feeling “thankful [he] could see so little” while he thinks of the distant “lamp or lighted window” that represents his girl. The narrator is engulfed by the false light that is his futile love.

The developmental stage of a young child’s life is very crucial and can be impacted by the media. In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger is a young girl living in a very important part of Germany’s history, the Second World War. Liesel’s childhood unfolds and develops against the backdrop of a time when words, books specifically were used for power and control. Liesel is someone who has a love for reading and, as such, books become very important to her, not only for her education but for her rebellion and discovering her true identity. Throughout the novel, books become a crucial symbol used to convey the desires and discovery of identity for the main character as her childish ignorance changes to her mature adulthood.

This interactive oral touched on a number of different topics that helped further my cultural and contextual understanding of The Thief and the Dogs. Although all of the topics discussed by this group connected to the novel, I found the most connections within the topic explaining the Egyptian views on marriages and divorce in the 1950s. I learned that Egyptian laws tend to discriminate against women in terms of divorce and adultery. However, women are allowed to divorce their husbands so long as they can prove in a course of law that their husbands are not adequately providing for their families. Additionally, it is quite common for people to remarry after divorce and this practice is not frowned upon. This connects to the novel in terms of