The Gravedigger's Handbook Book Analysis

Confronting the truth often reveals painful realities. In “One Writer’s Beginnings,” Eudora Welty details her very sheltered life. Afraid of any dangers that may affect her, Welty’s parents attempted to shield her from the world around her. Welty’s mother made the world around her seem more dangerous. As a byproduct of her sheltered youth, Welty reveals the truth in a palatable manner. She spends considerable effort making the truth non-painful. Every person copes with pain and loss differently. In many ways, Welty hides from the truth or at least protects herself from it by detaching herself from reality. Through context, clever word choice, and rhetorical devices, Welty compares and contrasts how she confronts pain

Eleanor turned to books for solace and escape from these shocking personal losses and the suppressing nurture in her grandmother’s house. In the following years, Eleanor continued to receive her grandmother’s idea of a proper nurture. She still studied with the tutor her mother had hired, took classes for French

Throughout the story they all grow to love each other. Especially Hans and Liesel, for every night Liesel would wake up terrified from a nightmare about her brother, and each of those night Hans would comfort her by showing her to read. Liesel and Hans grow an unbreakable bond, for he taught her to read and write, and later in the story it would save her life. As for Rosa and Liesel, well let’s just say their bond was special. Although Rosa Huberman is harsh and foul mouthed she loved Liesel very much and there was no doubt about it. While living in Molching Liesel finds herself a best friend who falls in love with her, his name is Rudy Steiner. In many of Liesel’s adventures, Rudy is almost always involved. But Rudy was not her only best friend, Max Vandenburg was one to. He was the Jew Liesel and her family hid in their basement, Liesel grew very fond of

The nostalgic tone Welty uses to list the books she has read causes the reader to associate books with a kind of warm comfort by her use of phrases such as "she'd read to me...when we were in her rocker together" and "in the diningroom on winter afternoons in front of the coal fire". The length of the lists also allows the reader to grasp the fact that Welty has been able to enjoy an enormous amount of books on various subjects, including "fairy tales-Grimm, Anderson...Robin Hood...a whack of Pilgrim's Progress and a long piece of Gulliver" and "the Columbia Encyclopedia, Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia, the Lincoln Library of Information, and later the Book of Knowledge". Furthermore, the lists give the reader the impression that there are

The tone of this novel can strike many people as hard to determine or understand. One of the best things about this novel is the consistency that Bechdel creates from her earliest childhood memories all the way until the ending of the book. Tone is known to illustrate the underlying feelings of the author. What is also very striking is Bechdel’s lack of emotion when any surprising event happens to her. What most tend to remember is when Mr. Bechdel’s death is announced to Bechdel and how she responds to the news. Normally speaking, or what most would refer to as normal is to have some kind of emotional breakthrough when finding out their loved one has passed in a tragic accident. “Is he dead? (Bechdel 81). In these three words Bechdel demonstrates her inability to fit into the mere “normal” category of reactions and blows the audience away. Bechdel explains how she cried for about two minutes to her girlfriend at the time and that was the most of mourning she did at all. Using the witty part of her, she pulls herself

These include love, hatred, comfort, and the ability to be able to think for yourself. Words have the power to connect others and spark a revolution in a person that can change the lives of many people. Along the journey to the Hubermann’s house Liesel's little brother died. Liesel stood at the burial site of her brother when suddenly a book was laying in the ground.

Liesel absolutely loves books even though she struggles to understand them all. Liesel being able to read the books of the mayor’s wife brought her joy. She could not believe, “That such a room existed!” (Zusak 134). Liesel grabs as many books as she can and spends as much time reading them. Anytime I go into a bookstore or a library, there is a certain atmosphere. It relieves me to be around books and a quiet area where I can just relax and read in silence.

She finds a book about gravedigging by her brother’s grave and this is the impetus to her love of reading. Reading books reminds her of her deceased brother and her last day with her mother. Her foster parents teach her how to to read and through this she learns the magic of words.

Oskar’s grandfather, Thomas Schell, was acquainted with several occurrences of death from the Dresden bombings that killed hundreds of thousands of people including his fiancé, Anna, and their unborn child. This trauma led him to become mute and hindered his ability to carry strong relationships in his future. However, the novel ultimately revolves around Oskar looking to make peace with his father’s death by meticulously searching who “Black” was that was written in an envelope of an unidentified key that he found in his father’s closet. Devastated Oskar struggled with the unfair and illogical idea of his father, the only person in the world who understood him, passing away in one of the cruelest and saddening moments in the history of the nation (which what to he referred to as heavy boots). As he spent every Saturday, overcoming fears of heights, trains, busy streets, and talking to people, Oskar eagerly traveled through the streets of New York to every person named Black’s doorstep in hopes of finding some answers about the mysterious key. His distant relationship with his mother seemed to only be getting worse as his curiosity for the key consumed his life: “Every time I left the apartment to go searching for the lock, I became a little lighter, because I was getting closer to Dad. But I also became a little heavier, because I was getting farther from Mom” (Foer 52). Death and its companion, grief, becomes the overarching obstacle that each character struggles to overcome throughout this

Jack also liked exploring books. His mother and father loved to read, and they saved all their books. They filled the New House with books – books in the study, in bedrooms, and on the stair landing, books in the attic piled up to Jack’s shoulders.

However, in this instance the reader see’s the grandfather making progress when he buries all the “things [he] wasn’t able to tell him. Letters” (322.) This displays him attempting to let go of the past. With that being said he is much elder and lived almost all of his life grieving Anna’s death. The author continues to show what grief over death can cause a person to do.

She sat calm and peaceful, ominous to the screaming and cries in the background. She was holding one book in her hand. The Ways of Life, by Stephen Ward. Flames ate up the books, the shelves dominated one after the other. She smiled, only a little while until it's all finished.

Gertrude awoke to the sound of people bustling about the muggy room where she had slept. It took her a short second to remember where she was, and who the people in the room were. Then, the appalling incidents of yesterday exploded in her brain like a frozen soda pop in a freezer. The images of her loving family being swept up in the ginormous flood made Gertrude feel like someone was pumping liquid nitrogen through her heart; an ache so strong, she thought that she must literally have a broken heart. She realized that they were dead; her father, Vincent, Marie, Libby Hipp, and Aunt Abbie. The day before, Gertrude’s shock had kept her from feeling any anguish or despair. Today, on the other hand, was an entirely different story.

Welty's language conveys such intensity and shows how valuable her experiences were to her by stating and explaining how the urge to read pushed her in such a way. I the text Welty tells of a cruel, witch-like librarian and how everyone feared her, however Welty's mother did not. Due to this, Welty's mother politely requested that her daughter be allowed to read any book, even adult ones but not Elise Dinsmore. Also with Mrs.Calloways rules about books, it pushed Welty to read as fast as she could. By being only allowed to check out two books a day and not being able to return any book the same day led her on an insatiable spree. With limited time she read as fast as she could to be able to read many more books.

The first point to this is when Hans Hubermann (Liesel’s step father) took Liesel in and was the first person to show her love at her new home when she was scared. He comforted Liesel whenever she was having a hard time. Max Vandenburg also showed love to Liesel. He was the Jew living in the Hubermann’s basement. Despite Max being in a dark basement hiding and fearing for his life, the one thing that kept him happy was Liesel. When Max was sick Liesel read to him every day until he recovered. Besides relationships with family, there was another main character that loved Liesel. His name was Rudy Steiner. Rudy had loved Liesel since the first moment he seen her, he did whatever he could for her right up until his last