The Ugly and Beauty Inside
The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a story filled with many emotions that help to bring the characters to life with many of them going through hardships and feelings of great loss. Death states, “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). The characters in The Book Thief such as Liesel, Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and Max find themselves in situations where they have to act a certain way so as to not put their own lives in danger. Even if they don’t believe in the same things or have the same values as the Nazi Party, they must pretend in order to keep themselves from danger. Sometimes in order to protect themselves and each other, they must do things that would be considered either ugly or beautiful actions.
Liesel Meminger is a hard character to pick ugliness out of because from the beginning of the book she comes off as a quiet and shy young girl who is unsure of what is happening in the world. She is afraid of the new home she has to live in and doesn’t talk much at first to her new parents, Rosa and Hans, yet Hans is the one who is able to get Liesel to open up. Liesel is not very nice to Rudy, always denying him the kiss he is always asking for from Liesel. While Liesel’s actions towards Rudy may seem a bit ugly and unkind, she truly cares for him and doesn’t even realize that she has loved him the whole time until his death at the end of the book. Liesel is still at an age where she doesn’t know the full effects that her actions have on herself and her family. She becomes fascinated with books and maybe even more so with the thrill that comes with stealing them. Liesel is told many times that it is dangero...
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...e this family who has been kind enough to treat him as an equal and is grateful in the end to have been given the chance to know what love and family are.
Nazi Germany was a place filled with so much hatred and so much depression that it seemed as though there could be no beauty found in a single person. The Book Thief shows so much death and sorrow that it feels as though there can’t possibly be beauty in any of the characters, but there is. Liesel, Rosa, Hans, Rudy, and Max are all proof that while there can be ugliness living deep within a person, the beauty inside is what matters most and is what gets them through such difficult times. Beauty can conquer ugliness inside of people if they focus on the right things and don’t allow the ugliness to take over.
Works Cited
Zusak, Markus. (2005). The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Print.
An individual's morals are rooted in their personal views which may be contradictory to the principles manifested by society. In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, characters living on Himmel Street who neglect Nazi ideology experience love for each other and humanity, thereby living a contented life in harsh conditions. The different types of love which individuals on Himmel Street encounter from refusing to obey societal ideologies and expectations is formed by supporting those in need and developing relationships with those that society has degraded.
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.
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.
Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief (2005), and Steven Spielberg, director of Schindler’s List (1993), both use their works to portray the theme of racism in Nazi-era Germany. Racism today affects millions of people daily, with 4.6 million people being racial discrimination in Australia alone. However, in Nazi-era Germany, Jewish people were discrimination because they weren’t part of the ‘master race’, causing millions to suffer and be killed. To explore this theme, the setting, characters, conflicts and symbols in both The Book Thief and Schindler’s List will be analysed and compared.
Mary Hoge had gone into labor Sunday 23rd of July 1972 giving birth to her fifth child, Robert Hoge. When Robert Hoge was born, his own mother didn’t want him. Robert’s mother Mary thought he was too ugly, that he was, in appearance, a monstrous baby. Robert was born with a tumor the size of a tennis ball right in the middle of his face and with short twisted legs. Robert was born in Australia, where he would have to undergo numerous operations that carried very high risk in order to try and live a “normal” life.
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 chaos and destruction that the Nazi’s are causing are not changing the lives of only Jews, but also the lives of citizens in other countries. Between Night by Elie Wiesel and The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom, comradeship, faith, strength, and people of visions are crucial to the survival of principle characters. Ironically, in both stories there is a foreseen future, that both seemed to be ignored.
Liesel and Rudy's relationship changes as the both of them mature and grow up. They grew up playing soccer on the street and then found satisfaction in stealing things with each other. One thing that never really changed was Rudy's persistence. Throughout the novel, Rudy continuously asks "How about a kiss, Saumensch?" Being completely upfront with his feelings. Liesel starts out only seeing Rudy as her best friend and nothing more. Through the course of the novel, she starts realizing that she has feelings for Rudy, but refuses to show it. She completely denies her feelings and I think it is due to all of the abandonment she faced in her life. She was probably afraid of getting hurt. Death says, " the only thing worse than a boy who hates you [is] a boy who loves you" (Zusak 52). This statement is true. A boy that hates you can easily be hated in return. A boy that loves you and is persistent like Rudy was, makes it hard to push the boy away and makes it hard on the girl to avoid or reject his feelings. Rudy loved Liesel for what she was and everything she was. I honestly think that the formation of Liesel's was inevitable. I think that Liesel told Mr, Stiener that she kissed Rudy's corpse because she wanted him to know that there was closure and that Rudy was loved. Death even stated that "it embarrassed her, but she thought he might have liked to know" (Zusak
In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, many characters develop an understanding of the power of words which results in many characters being negatively impacted by the theme.
A crucial concept developed throughout Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved is the process of “the demolition of a man” through useless acts of violence. In order for the Nazis to control and murder without regard or guilt, they had to diminish men into subhumans. Those who entered the camps were stripped of their dignity and humanity, devoid of any personal identity. Men and women were reduced to numbers in a system that required absolute submission, which placed them in an environment where they had to struggle to survive and were pitted against their fellow prisoners. The purpose of the camps were not merely a place for physical extermination, but a mental one as well. Primo Levi exposes these small and large acts of deprivation and destruction within his two texts in order for readers to become aware of the affects such a system has on human beings, as well as the danger unleashed by a totalitarian system.
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.
According to the article by Dave Barry, "The Ugly Truth about Beauty", the article compares between men and women. Barry illustrate that men think of themselves as average looking unlike women they always think that they are not good enough. Barry think contributes to this difference is that women when they were young they used to play with a Barbie which make them feel that they have to be perfect just like here and that generate low self-self-esteem. On the other hand men used to play by their action figures. Which they are not a good looker. In this article Barry offer advice for both gender. That women must have self-confidence and men should care about their look just a little more. I am a women and I know that we are some times be obsessed
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. As the book carried along, it was revealed that the Hubermanns were not Nazi supporters, and even took in a Jew and hid him in their basement later on in the book. Liesel became great friends with the Jew living in her basement, Max, who shared many similarities which helped form their relationship. Both of
We watch death explore the beauty and ugliness of the human race in Markus Zusak’s book The Book Thief. We watch as Liesel, Hans, and Rosa do everything they can to help out a group of people who were treated with such disrespect during this time period. This group, the Jews, were beaten for taking food that was given to them, and when they died no one would even care. But, these few people gave them food, a place to hide, a sense of belonging, and and a reason to live. They have to work day and night, and do everything they can. Even though people aren’t so beautiful at all times, there is still hope. As we have learned in this book that even when 99 percent of humans aren’t so marvelous there is still that one percent that is to delightful that it would touch anyones heart.
...e ability to achieve anything in life. Hopefully, readers would learn from this novel that beauty is not the most important aspect in life. Society today emphasizes the beauty of one's outer facade. The external appearance of a person is the first thing that is noticed. People should look for a person's inner beauty and love the person for the beauty inside. Beauty, a powerful aspect of life, can draw attention but at the same time it can hide things that one does not want disclosed. Beauty can be used in a variety of ways to affect one's status in culture, politics, and society. Beauty most certainly should not be used to excuse punishment for bad deeds. Beauty is associated with goodness, but that it is not always the case. This story describes how the external attractiveness of a person can influence people's behavior and can corrupt their inner beauty.