The Character Growth Of Death In 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.

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.

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.

Another way The Book Thief shows suffering is when Max heard about the bad news “His body felt like it was being screwed up into a ball, like a page littered with mistakes. Like garbage. Yet each day he managed to strengthen himself, disgusted, and grateful. Wrecked somehow, but not torn to pieces. (194) when death mentions that Max “managed to strengthen himself”, and the description “wrecked somehow, but not torn to pieces” reminds me of how amazing it is that humans are

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,

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.

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?

The novel is narrated by Death, a guy who’s getting tired and bored of his job. He wants a vacation, but sadly no one can replace him. He tries to find ways to give meaning to his job. He is fascinated by humans and colours of the world, and he is curious of how humans are capable of so much ugliness and so much beauty. Death is some way more human than a lot of people.

Over the summer I read The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The novel contains many memorable quotes, with powerful meanings that can be applied to the reader’s life. The novel is the story of Liesel Meminger’s journey through the eyes of the narrator, Death. Liesel has many hardships in her life, but also a lot of good fortune. The novel shows both Liesel and Death’s reactions to each situation she encounters.

In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Death, the narrator is trying to understand humans. To accomplish this, he follows the life of a little girl named Liesel Meminger. Throughout the book, he learns from her and others that humans can be both beautiful and ugly. He sees both the goodness of Liesel and others, and he sees the evils brought about by Hitler and the Nazi party. Throughout the book, Death’s understanding of humans and their ways is heightened by his study of Liesel and of other people.

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.

The Book Thief opens in a manner which is interesting to the reader with the storyteller who ends up being Death himself. In the Book Thief, the writer Zusak makes a magnificent story through the eyes of Death. Death is the storyteller of the Book Thief. He in a manner is at first scornful with a dorky comical inclination , yet as the novel advances and WW2 propels , he communicates exhaustion and regrets about needing to gather such a large number of souls. My first contention is that Death offers an exceptional and distinctive methodology regarding the matter of portraying the story. He is depicted as an Omniscient First-individual perspective in the story. My second contention is that Death can anticipate and indicate vital occasions of key characters in the book.

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.

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.

Words can influence the mind in many ways that thought may not be able to. They are carefully placed and shared in different ways by each and every individual. Words have powerful impacts and can majorly impact how one may think, feel, or even lead others to feel. Written by Markus Zusak, “The Book Thief” describes a story of an innocent foster girl, Liesel Meminger, who resides in Munich, Germany at one of the most troubling time periods in history, Nazi Germany. A tale narrated by the one and only Death himself, shows the perspective from his point of view, as well as others, describing how Liesel had been seized away from her birth mother at a young age, and put into a foster family. Her new family, the Hubermanns. As she matures and grows into a more critical thinker, understanding and analyzing everything that carefully happens around her. Her foster-father, Hans guides her and teaches her how to read, which little does she know sparks her journey, the art of stealing books. Liesel soon discovers that words aren 't simply lines on a page, they are strong emotions packed into a form that merely is held in her delicate hands. Not only did she hold the pages of emotion, she held a power, a dangerous weapon of words, a weapon of control, and every book that she had stolen was giving her unimaginable power that made her think in ways that she would’ve never thought she could have. As with Nazi propaganda, and a gift that enabled her to broaden her worldview. Liesel evolves