The Book Thief written by Markus Zusak tells the story of a young girl in Nazi Germany named Liesel Meminger. Throughout the novel she encounters many issues and meets people that share the same problems she has. This includes abandonment and survivor's guilt. In the book the theme of survivor’s guilt and abandonment is shown prominently in characters Liesel, Hans, and Michael. Whether it is being the only one to a survive a bombing or leaving family behind they all feel toll of guilt and hurt as they struggle to get back normal lives. Liesel has experienced both abandonment and survivor's guilt at a very young age. At the start of the book Liesel’s brother passes away on a train ride which will eventually lead to her being abandoned at a foster …show more content…
This is when Liesel is being dropped off at her new home without her Mother and shows that she is hurt and saddened by the losses of her family. She also feels sad that her brother had to die and not her. Liesel eventually starts to recover but continues to write to her birth Mother and sees visions of her dead brother in her dreams. Liesel is known throughout the book for speaking phrases such as “I cannot lose you”. Finally when she accepts that she will never see her family again another tragedy strikes. Bombs arrive at her home on Himmel Street killing everyone including her foster parents and best friend. Liesel survives the bombing but is once again left alone with the sadness of being a survivor. This is especially hard for her to recover from because she felt terrible being the only one to …show more content…
Occasions in which he has experienced this are when fighting in World War 1 and being in an LSE car crash. When Hans was fighting in World War 1 he befriended a jewish man named Erik Vanderburg. They shared many common interests and worked together to survive. So when a sergeant asked who had neat handwriting Erik volunteered Hans thinking that he would get Hans out of battle. Hans spent the whole day writing letters and was the only one of his troop to survive battle. This caused Hans to feel tremendous survivor's guilt especially when he found out that Erik had a wife and son. “You know” Hans explained to her, “he saved my life”....”you never told me”, he said to a dead Erik Vanderburg and the Stuttgart skyline. “You never told me you had a son” pg 159. This is Hans reflecting on his survival and how Erik deserved to survive more than he did. Hans during World War 2 was also recruited to the LSE. The task force was responsible for cleaning up cities after bombs had landed. Among the many people in the squad was a man named Reinhold Zucker. Zucker was a spunky young man who despised Hans for beating him at cards. When they were driving to a cleanup site Reinhold made Hans move to another seat as a power move. The car crashed and flipped leaving everyone generally unharmed but killing Zucker.“It should have been me”, he said.”What?” the sergeant called over from the truck. “He was sitting in my
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 Book Thief, author Markus Zusak tells the tragic story of Liesel Meminger and her experiences in 1939 Nazi Germany. Zuzak incorporates compelling literary devices such as toe curling foreshadowing, personification, and vivid imagery in the form of simile and metaphors to grasp the readers’ interest. Zusak’s use of various literary devices helps to deepen the text and morals of the story, and makes the dramatic historical novel nearly impossible to put down.
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.
One may hear the words love and abandonment and believe they are opposites, but this is not the case in The Book Thief. Markus Zusak uses abandonment to bring together two characters. One night Liesel and Max reveal to one another their reoccurring nightmares. Liesel has a dream where she feels abandoned by her mother and brother while Max has a dream where he abandons his family. Even though Liesel is abandoned and Max is the abandoner they both feel the same way toward what had occurred to each of them. Through this sharing of nightmares comes a special unspoken connection between the two. Liesel and Max go from strangers to practically brother and sister who love one another, which may seem odd for the love came directly from abandonment. Liesel’s first encounter with abandonment came from her brother dying on the train on the way to Liesel’s foster home. Liesel was very upset and hurt by her mother and did not under stand why she was doing this until later. “She saw it all so clearly. Her starving mother, her missing father. Kommunisten” (Zusak 111) Liesel connected the dots and realized that her mother was married to a communist, which was a great danger during the reign of Hitler. Liesel came to comprehend that her mother gave her up to keep her safe and away from Hitler. Her mother did all of this out of love for her. All the pain and suffering that Liesel has gone through has been caused by
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
In chapter (?) The Gates of Thievery. In this chapter Hans Hubermann ( Liesel Foster farther) meets Liesel on the church steps after a book burning. Liesel she asks Hans if her mother is a comm...
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.
The feeling of guilt can be revealed through Hans’ character due to the death of his friend, Erik Vandenburg. For example, after Erik’s death, Hans felt responsible to visit his family. When he came back from the war, Hans told Erik’s wife, ““You know,” Hans explained to her, “he saved my life.” [...] “He—if there’s anything you ever need.” He
The main character Liesel, known as “the book thief” is who Death is looking over. Liesel, her mother, and brother are on a train to Munich. On the train ride her brother dies. She and her mother get off the train to bury him. The first book Liesel steals is from the gravediggers. They continue the journey to a town called Molching, where Liesel will be raised by foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann. Liesel adjusts to her new home life. Hans teaches Liesel how to read. The war is escalating in Germany. The town holds a book-burning to celebrate Hitler’s birthday. That’s when Liesel steals another book from the flames. Liesel’s job is to deliver laundry to the Hermann family. The Hermanns’ have a library full of books. Liesel is allowed to read them in the study. Meanwhile, a German-Jew named Max needs help, so he seeks out the Hubermanns. Max hides in the basement, so he is safe from the Nazis. Liesel begins stealing books from the Hermanns. The Nazis parade the Jews through the town of Molching on their way to the concentration camp for everyone to see. Liesel is given a blank notebook to write her own story. One night the neighborhood is bombed. Hans, Rosa, and the rest of the neighborhood is killed. Rescue workers find Liesel under the rubble. She leaves behind her finished book, called The Book Thief. Death, who has been watching, rescues the book. Liesel ends up living with the mayor
This accumulation of events which are skewed by common cultural perspectives is counteracted by the creative choice of narrator. The Book Thief, a narrative detailing Liesel, a young girl's journey of life during World War II employs this frequently. This form of biased writing within the novel byMarkus Zusak has constructed his expression of character and events to be distanced from our general connotations of the events occurring and preconceived ideas of the people of NAZI Germany. Few scenes occur outside of the context of the Hubberman's or Himmel street and no time goes by where the scene is not overlooked by the narration of Death.
Liesel’s mom leaves her with foster parents because she wishes to protect her from the fate she is enduring. The words Paula, Liesel’s mom, uses go against Hitler because she is a communist which resulted in her being taken away and Liesel to lose her mother and experience the loss of her. This shows Liesel experiences unhappiness because of her mother’s disappearance which is caused by the words she openly uses that contradicts Hitler.
...by American bombers and everyone but Liesel dies on the street. Liesel only survives because she was writing a book of her own, and was in the basement when the bombs struck. When she is rescued by the police, she rushes to find her parents and Rudy, but only finds them both dead. The story ends with her being adopted by Ilsa Hermann. Of course, this does not mean the story is over; there is an epilogue. Max survives the war and later finds his way back to Liesel, who rejoices when they finally meet. When Liesel finally dies, death takes her away from the others and shows her the book that she was writing when the bombs fell. She asks him if he understood the meaning of it, to which he responds with his own sage advice. When death takes her soul away for good this time, and takes one last look at the title of the book. The Book Thief by Liesel Meminger.
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.
Liesel experiences abandonment throughout her life, and the novel during a suppressed time in World War II Germany. Through her experiences Liesel’s learns to equate abandonment with love knowing that circumstance have forced her loved ones to leave her.
German citizens had to endure a challenging lifestyle, presented by Adolf Hitler, of fascism, the holocaust, Jewish laws and propaganda during World War II. From 1939-1942, Nazi Germany affected the lives of Jews, Gypsies, Slavic people, and other groups living in Germany by getting rid of the undesirables, known as the Holocaust. Only Germans with the look of blond hair and blue eyes were even considered to live, only if he or she had no defects or disabilities, anyone else was sent to and killed in concentration camps. The Book Thief takes place in a town near Munich, Germany during this time of the holocaust. The novel focuses on the lives of the people and how they cope and deal with the immediate effects of WWII. It emphasizes the danger of hiding a Jew in a family’s basement, and how they are constantly paranoid of being caught.