The Themes Of Death In The Book Thief By Markus Zusak

Words: Lifeless figures filled with potent power With the mention of death, what first comes to mind? An obvious answer tends to lurk within the cases of our hearts: emotions and memories filled with sorrow, misery, and grief. It’s likely our first characterization of death isn’t one of beauty due to humanity’s label of death as a figure of fear. However, with the introduction of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the narrator happens to be Death, whose anatomy includes emotional capabilities much like our own, proving themselves prominent and important to the backbone of the story. In the beginning, we are not only introduced to Death but many contrasting themes through a young girl, Liesel Meminger, who has become familiar with the meetings

During the disarray of this time period, and with Death’s job at all time high, we find Liesel beginning to make radical connections with not only the people and scene around her, but with the words and the books that compose her new foundation. Throughout the progression of the book, we follow the rivers of Liesel’s relationships. Nestled beneath the surface of them all lies two mighty antipodes: Hitler and Death. With these powers as the control panel, we see much destruction, devastation, and despair within the story, but only one of those characters is at fault. Despite the fact that we would typically place the fault upon both Hitler and Death, in an eye opening reality, humanity is illustrated in the character who isn’t even human. In The Book Thief, an interesting perspective is shown through Death’s narration, revealing that beauty is present even during a time saturated in brutality. Contrast also makes its appearance as Hitler’s and Death’s usage of words exhibits a drastic difference in the impact words can have and models the power

As mentioned before, Hitler’s usage of his words is most obvious in Max Vandenburg’s book, The Word Shaker, where he displays Hitler’s manipulation, saying “great forests of words [have] risen throughout Germany… It [is] a nation of farmed thoughts” (Zusak 445). Hitler chooses words as a weapon, using it for mass murder. On the contrary, Death’s usage of words is seen through his narration as he describes the harsh scenes in an elegant, readable image. The most characteristic examples Death displays of this is through his continuous, poetic descriptions of the sky. For example, in the chapter “The Summer of Attributes” when Death describes the loss of a woman’s son, he says, “the sky was murky and deep like quicksand”, which is only a small sliver of Death’s ability to beautifully portray a horrific image (Zusak 145). With the help of Death and his descriptions, it enables the reader to see how Hitler and he use their words in such