Catalonia is a recognized autonomous region in the north-western region of Spain, Catalonia is home to the large Spanish city of Barcelona. Catalonia has long wanted to separate from what it sees as an oppressive Spanish government. In October 2017 Catalonia held a binding referendum regarding independence from Spain. The Spanish government deemed the referendum to be illegal and sent out special police forces who shut down polling stations and arrested separatist leaders. Despite the incredibly hostile environment of the referendum, ninety percent of Catalan voters voted to separate from Spain. The Catalan people stood up to the government by voting for separation, even though, the Spanish government forbade it, just like how characters defy …show more content…
An example of characters not falling in line with the Nazi’s in The Book Thief is when the Steiner family refuses to send Rudy away with the Nazi’s to train as an elite German soldier.(408-411) The Steiners defy the Nazi rule by not following what is expected of them and not being honored and immediately agreeing to send Rudy away. It is morally justifiable for the Steiners to not want to send their young son away for any reason especially for him to train as an elite soldier and then join the war. A second example of certain characters not falling in line with Nazi’s is how Hans Hubermann decided “ When Hitler rose to in 1933, though, the painting business fell slightly awry. Hans didn’t join the NSDAP like the majority of people did. He put a lot of thought into his decision.”(180) Hans does not fall in line with majority of Germans by not joining the NSDAP. This defies the Nazi’s power, but he does it for very moral reasons. Hans does not join the party because he believes in fairness, and he could not join a group who antagonized people for something that was out of their own …show more content…
The first example of people breaking the law to harbor an innocent in The Book Thief is when Hans and Rosa Hubermann harbor Max Vandenburg in their basement. (180-) Harboring a Jewish person in Nazi Germany would have been a very serious crime. The Hubermanns are morally justified in their decision to protect Max from the Nazi’s, because he is being prosecuted because of something that he can not control. There is no way for Max to change the fact that he is a jew and the Hubermanns know that he has not done anything wrong to deserve the way that he is being treated by society. The second example of characters breaking the law by protecting the innocent is how the Hubermanns adopt Liesel Meminger from her mother.(Whole Book) In part two of The Book Thief it is revealed that Liesel’s parents were communists, communists would have been another group that was prosecuted by the Nazi’s. By protecting young Liesel from Nazi authority and not reporting her or her mother to an authority the Hubermanns are breaking Nazi law. The actions that the Hubermanns take to protect Liesel from prosecution are morally justified because Liesel is just a little girl who knew nothing of her parents political views until they are revealed in part two. Had the Hubermanns turned Liesel in she would have likely been taken away and
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” by Markus Zusak is narrated by death and begins when Liesel’s brother dies on a train with her and her mother. At her brother’s burial, she steals her first book, “The Grave Digger’s Handbook” and soon after is separated from her mother and sent to live with foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, in Molching, where the majority of the book takes place. At school, Liesel is teased because she can’t read so Hans teaches her to read when she wakes up from her frequent nightmares about her brother’s death. Hans is a painter and an accordion player and also plays the accordion for her after her nightmares. Liesel grows very close with Hans and also becomes close friends with her neighbor Rudy Steiner who constantly asks her to
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.
In this essay I will talk about The Book Thief Characters. The characters are Liesel, Rudy, And Max. I Will talk about how they are Influenced by society in This Book/Movie. I am going to three Paragraphs about these three characters. This essay is going to be a Compare and Contrast Essay.
In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak communicates an over-arching topic. This topic is; all objects convey dark tones. The idea is transmitted into the writing subtly throughout the excerpt, as well as the story.
Human nature has many elements that reveal the growth and personality of a person. In Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief”, the author successfully portrays various aspects of human nature through Hans’ conflicts that originate from the tough reality that he lives in. Elements of human nature can be seen as a result of Hans’ constant struggles with guilt, kindness, and love.
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?
How does one write a book about the horrors of the holocaust and portray the German society as much a victim as the others? Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief published in the year 2005 does exactly that, weaving a story in its 552-paged glory and opening a window into the life of the little Liesel Meminger. However, that’s not it. It’s just the tip of the iceberg that The Book Thief really is. What makes The Book Thief truly a different book to come by is not its concept but its narrator. He says he can be agreeable, affable and amiable and that that’s just the A’s. What he says he definitely isn’t- is nice because quiet correctly Death never is nice. Yes, The Book Thief is narrated by the wry, often sardonic and darkly humorous but secretly compassionate, Death.
Botwinick writes in A History of the Holocaust, “The principle that resistance to evil was a moral duty did not exist for the vast majority of Germans. Not until the end of the war did men like Martin Niemoeller and Elie Wiesel arouse the world’s conscience to the realization that the bystander cannot escape guilt or shame” (pg. 45). In The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick writes of a world where Niemoeller and Wiesel’s voices never would have surfaced and in which Germany not only never would have repented for the Holocaust, but would have prided itself upon it. Dick writes of a world where this detached and guiltless attitude prevails globally, a world where America clung on to its isolationist policies, where the Axis powers obtained world domination and effectively wiped Jews from the surface, forcing all resistance and culture to the underground and allowing for those in the 1960’s Nazi world to live without questioning the hate they were born into.
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 second example in The Book Thief is when Rudy Steiner a local teenage boy from Molching, Germany sees an Allied Force pilot fall from the sky into Nazi Germany, and when he is dying Rudy places a teddy bear on top of the man’s head, symbolizing the unity and the attempt at helping somebody by human nature, as he does not consider his affiliation with enemy powers before commiting the action. Rudy Steiner’s pureness of heart and good intention ultimately portrays a humanization in the radicalized state of Nazi Germany in a time when affiliating, assisting or aiding with anybody else other than German’s can put you in a labor camp or killed. Lastly, the helping from Hans Hubermann to the Jewish shopkeeper shows his overall good will in the world and makes his death and others in Molching an utter disgrace. When the Jewish shopkeeper had come back to a robbery and ransacking of his store including graffiti on the door of the shop and broken glass, Hans offered to help repaint his door, as he is a painter by
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.
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.
While he uses examples of being wrongfully yelled at constantly, the author portrays himself as being innocent. He also states on different occasions that