Victimization In The Millennium Trilogy

The Book Thief, written by an Australian author, Markus Zusak, is a devastatingly powerful historical-fiction novel that bears several re-readings. Being one of the greatest, most divinely-written epilogues in my school library, The Book Thief, is a soul-shattering, thought-provoking story that undoubtedly can be recommended to the young and old alike. This poignant, prolonged, but achingly sad book, is the pinnacle of contemporary historical-fiction, poised to become a classic. Phenomenally breathtaking, and inspiring, bringing nothing but anticipatory dread, this lyrical, surreal book, though depressingly morbid at times, was my “gateway” to historical-fiction. The tribulations and trials provided in the novel, had inevitable passion, perspective

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.

“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 short book Victims by Phillip Shaw Paludan highlights the killings of fifteen individuals during the Civil War in a remote Appalachian area in North Carolina. This area, called Shelton Laurel, was home to many families and most of them were poor. What Paludan writes is how the Civil War gave way for revenge. Because of the location of Shelton Laurel, the Confederates often tried to take control of the area and recruit many people for their war efforts. Unionist also wanted recruits from this area as well.

While fighting for freedom a lot of important lives were lost trying to stand up for their own beliefs and rights. The Holocaust was a Jewish massacre including the lives of six million Jews. On the other hand, The Civil War was America's central event that took the lives of 625,000 people in-exchange for freedom. Both of them included acts of injustice and violence, beliefs of inequality, hatred, and societal changes. These events caused disparity in the society in which live on today.

By viewing the beginning of Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief through the Marxist Literary lense the readers can decipher the power struggle that Max Vandenburg suffers from, which exhibits the theme of entrapment. The Marxist Literary theory suggests that the power struggle between social classes is a major force in history. These social classes are determined by The Great Chain of Being because everything in the universe had a hierarchical order. In The Book Thief, the narrator, Death, is explaining Liesel’s experiences in Nazi Germany. Liesel Meminger, a main character, was at a book burning meant to destroy the Jewish influence, when Death describes what she hears from a Nazi leader. Before the fire is lit, he says “‘...we also stop our enemies [the Jews]

Violence has been interpreted in various way by authors as the centuries have gone by. In Candide, Voltaire paints a picture about violence in the 17th century as war that continues to rage over centuries between empires with the main protagonist Candide, and his fellow members being subjected to all kinds of hardships as they themselves become casualties of war. In the Dew Breaker, Danticat discusses the extent of the everlasting damage, both physical and psychological, that is caused by totalitarian regimes, such as the Duvalier’s in Haiti in the 1970s. The central character in this story, The Dew Breaker represents an individual that is the product of such regimes, with his cruel and sadistic past as a torturer epitomizing violence. On the

Society thrives on pillars of morality, which could only be attainable from the people that thrive within it. Not all individuals appeal to morality. Some are born with predominantly immoral character traits. Due to this, they display various questionable behaviors that collectively lead up to the decline of the society and its values. All in all, multiple factors contribute to the decaying of community, one of which is violence. Violence takes up different forms, which primarily simulate a criminal nature. The vice has become so prevalent in society that creators of literature art pieces find it hard to resist incorporating concepts of violence in their work. In both The Cask of Amontillado and Trifles, the ability of violence to stand out as the central conflict proves the role that it plays in destroying the society.

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.

In The Trial by Franz Kafka, the protagonist K. is going through what is often thought of as one of the most dehumanizing aspects of society. Even in the United States many criticize the justice system for being dehumanizing. People are forced to wear the same thing, act the same way, and are given numbers instead of names. In The Trial Kafka emphasizes the dehumanizing aspects of this process by exacerbating the bureaucratic steps that must be accomplished and adds more uncertainty and secrecy to the steps. Kafka’s writing shows the lack of information that K. is given, and the symbolic dehumanization that occurs during the whipping and with K. lacking a last name.

“Punishment,” a poem written by Irish author Seamus Heaney, speaks of the discovery of the body of a young bog girl, who as realized later in the poem, was punished for being an “adulteress.” (23) On closer inspection and as the poem shifts from past to present the faith of the bog girl is compared with the faith of another woman in more recent violent times, namely The Troubles in Northern Ireland. In this poem Heaney thus comments, through the use of literary devices such as enjambment, contrast, imagery, metaphors and alliteration and through his diction, on the cruelty of human nature, guilt and on the question of whether we have changed and evolved over time or whether we are still, deep inside, as barbaric and savage

Destructive and irresponsible freedom has been granted boundless space. Society appears to have little defense against the abyss of human decadence, such as, for example, misuse of liberty for moral violence against young people, motion pictures full of pornography , crime and horror. It is considered to be part of freedom and theoretically counter-balanced by the young people’s right not to look or not to accept. Life organized legalistically has thus shown its inability to defend itself against the corrosion of evil. (4)

In Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and William Shakespeare’s King Lear it is evident that the punishment of innocent individuals by evildoers catalyzes violence thus, culminating in the disruption of society.

The term violence brings to memory an image of physical or emotional assault on a person. In most circumstances, the person affected due to violence is aware that a violent action has been performed on that person. There is another form of violence where the affected individual, in most cases are unaware of the violence inflicted upon them. These types of violence are termed as structural violence. Structural violence is a form of invisible violence setup by a well-defined system, to limit an individual’s development to his full potential, by using legal, political, social or cultural traditions (Winter and Leighton, 1).

Seamus Heaney is a widely celebrated poet from Northern Ireland and was well known for writing about his culture and song-like pieces that touched on historical and ethical natures. In “Punishment”, the piece focuses on the image of a dead girl, now a preserved piece of history, who was supposedly killed for committing adultery in Germany. In the dark, dramatic, and historical poem “Punishment” by Seamus Heaney, he uses overt words and phrasing, internal rhyme, as well as alliteration, metaphors, and other literary devices to uncover the brutality, injustice, and chilling exposedness of the murder of the young girl, who is the subject of the piece.