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All about the book thief
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When I first started the novel The Book Thief, I was somewhat skeptical on whether or not I would learn or take away many things from the story, since I already know a lot from that time period. I have family members that have been in combat and my father is a war history buff, but it turned out that I learned a ton from the story. One thing that I learned was that the German soldiers were willing to whip and beat up a fourteen-year-old girl, just because she was talking to a Jew. This was demonstrated later on in the novel when Liesel finally finds Max when he is walking to Dachau and she runs up to him and starts to talk to him. The German soldiers pull her out of the group of starving Jews, but she runs back in, but then they pull
A example why people are brutal in The Book Thief is when the bomber planes were dropping bombs on the small town killing many people. My thoughts on this is even though the Nazi started this doesn’t mean they should kill innocent families.
The Book Thief and The Devil’s Arithmetic both focus on the prejudice Hitler had on different types of people during World War II. Liesel and Hannah both lost someone they had dearly loved. Liesel lost Rudy and Hannah lost many members of her family. In a time of fearfulness, both had told stories to the people surrounding them. Although both were not seen as equal in the eyes of many during their time, I see them as courageous and brave heroes after what they underwent.
Prologue: On page 4 the narrator says, “Personally, I like a chocolate- colored sky. Dark, Dark chocolate. People say it suits me.”(Zusak 4) This led me to believe the narrator is death. He sees life in color because he appreciates color more because his life is so dark and filled with death, color is in our lives and our souls will soon be filled with darkness and him and not have a colorful life.
In the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak the narrator is Death, who shows itself as sympathetic and sensitive towards the suffering of the world and the cruel human nature, through its eyes, we can get to know the heartbreaking story of Liesel Meminger an ordinary, but very lucky nine-year old German girl; living in the midst of World War II in Germany. In this book the author provides a different insight and observation about humanity during this time period from a German view and not an Allied perspective, as we are used to.
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger, an orphaned little girl living in Nazi Germany, evolves partly through her numerous literary thefts. At her younger brother’s gravesite, she steals her first book, The Grave Digger’s Handbook, which teaches her not only the method to physically bury her brother, but also lets her emotionally bury him and move on. The theft of her next book, The Shoulder Shrug, from a book burning marks the start of Liesel’s awareness and resistance to the Nazi regime. As a story with a Jewish protagonist “who [is] tired of letting life pass him by – what he refer[s] to as the shrugging of the shoulders to the problems and pleasures of a person’s time on earth,” this novel prepares her both for resisting the
The Book Thief and Nazi Germany The heavily proclaimed novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is a great story that can help you understand what living in Nazi Germany was like. Throughout the story, the main character, Liesel goes through many hardships to cope with a new life in a new town and to come to the recognition of what the Nazi party is. Liesel was given up for adoption after her mother gave her away to a new family, who seemed harsh at first, but ended up being the people who taught her all the things she needed to know. Life with the new family didn’t start off good, but the came to love them and her new friend, Rudy.
Throughout life many people face difficulties. Depending on the person’s strength some will get through tough times, but some will fail to overcome them. Two books where characters have to face many challenges include: Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Book Thief. These two stories deal with people overcoming the difficulties faced throughout everyday life. Some difficulties include racism, religious discrimination, and dealing with others’ cruelness or kindness. Examples from these books prove that the characters have challenges throughout the stories to overcome. In the face of adversity what causes some individuals to fail while others prevail?
Character relationships between a German and a Jew are connections seen in both the novel The Book Thief and the film Schindler’s List. The two texts show what horrific events happened during WWII. Schindler’s List focuses on the charming and greedy German businessman Oskar Schindler during the Holocaust who buys 1100 Jews. He does this to save them from concentration camps using his own money and with the help of an accountant named Itzhak Stern, a Jew whom Schindler protects. Similarly, there is a relationship between a German and a Jew in The Book Thief. Hans Hubermann, a German foster parent and house painter living in Molching, risks his life as he hides a Jew named Max in his basement from the Nazis. They form great bonds through the struggles that life puts in front of them, like Oskar and Itzhak in Schindler’s List. Itzhak and Max are some of the few Jews being treated humanely in these texts. There is a comparison here as the texts are both about WWII but in the texts the characters portray different ways the Jews were treated. Both Germans in these texts are protecting the Jew from being killed. Another aspect of the justice of war is the extent of harm to civilians. This is shown in these texts as the rest of the Jews ...
“Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness” (84). In the beginning, we are introduced to the narrator by the name of Death. He informs the readers that he has many stories, but only remembers the ones that interest him. The tale of Liesel Meminger is one such tale, as he was always fascinated by her will to live through the most horrible instances. It should be duly noted however, that this story does not have a happy ending. Death makes this clear before we even have a chance to get our hopes up. He tells us that everyone dies; the amount of time that they last is truly the only difference. After this sordid fact is in place, he mentions just Liesel first attracted his attention.
In The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, beauty and brutality is seen in many of the characters. Rudy, Liesel, and Rosa display examples of beauty and brutality often without realizing what exactly they are doing, because it is a part of their human nature. Zusak not only uses his characters, but also the setting of the novel in Nazi Germany to allude to his theme of the beauty and brutality of human nature. The time in which the novel is set, during World War II, displays great examples of beauty and brutality, such as the mistreatment of the Jews. As a result of this time period, the characters have to go through troubling times, which reveals their beautiful and brutal nature in certain circumstances. Zusak uses his characters and their experiences to demonstrate the theme of the beauty and brutality of human nature in the novel.
The famous author, George Orwell, once wrote, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.” Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief tells the story of a girl named Liesel Meminger in Nazi Germany whose relationships and words define her. Upon Liesel’s arrival on Himmel Street, she is inspired to learn to read because all of her life before, words controlled her but she wanted to have the power over those words. While Liesel learns how to read, she spends an ample amount of time with her neighbor, Rudy Steiner, the boy with the hair of lemons. Rudy soon becomes Liesel’s best friend and partner in crime when they embark on their thieving escapades. While all the main characters of Himmel Street are memorable in their own right, Rudy Steiner is the most memorable character because he lives his life to the fullest every single day and has courage that most adults do not have.
If you were a German citizen during World War II, do you think you would be a Nazi? Most people would say no even though, in actuality, most people would be. It is because people need to succumb to societal expectations to survive in a society such as that of Germany during WWII and in the book, The Book Thief, this theme of individual versus society is explored with people complying and fighting social expectations. Sometimes people side with the Nazi Party out of fear of being targeted and other times fight against Nazi Party because of love for their family and fellow man with usually terrible consequences. In The Book Thief, the theme of the individual versus society is shown many times with characters conforming and defying social expectations.
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 imprisoned in concentration camps. Max, the Jew that the Hubermanns were hiding, could cause them to get into deep trouble. However, they still hid him. The Hubermanns lived in a town close to a concentration camp and often saw marches of prisoners through town. Even with a potential prisoner living in their residence, the Hubermanns, along with most everyone else in Molching, were unaware of the events that actually happened in the concentration camp and marches.
Markus Zusak's The Book Thief is a Fictional story of a young girl, Liesel, growing up in Nazi Germany. The book is geared towards Young-Adults with the goal of convincing the reader that not all Germans during World War II were bad. Using a unique narrative we are guided through the story line by Death, who will often tell us his opinion of the going-ons of the story as well as giving us further context so as to allow a better understanding of the situations we are presented with. From a young age I was taught that the Germans were bad people, much like Muslims today we generalize an entire population based off of the actions of a relatively small group of the whole. After reading The Book Thief, although a fictional story, it has brought me to understand that most Germans during WWII were merely trying to get by, they were living ordinary, or as
Death states that, “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). This book shows us human doing things that weren’t even imaginable before this point. Many people give into ideas that were lies. But, we also watch a few people go out of their way and sacrifice everything for a man they barely even know. They do everything they can to keep him safe and alive. They work harder, the get another job, and they even steal. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, death examines the ugliness and the beauty of humans.