In the novel The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the claim is that change is good, I think that this is the claim because in the beginning Liesel is always afraid and towards the end she is brave. Markus tells the story of a young girl named Liesel, who is living in Germany during World War I and World War II. She has many adventures, whether it’s stealing books (hence the title) or just living her daily life with her family and friends but sometimes the events aren’t always good. One day when she was with Rudy and the other kids they went to the old man’s farm and stole his food (like apples, bread, etc). While they were going up the fence Rudy got caught and Liesel was told to just leave him, but since Rudy was her best friend she helped him …show more content…
This was very traumatic for Liesel since she saw her brother die right in front of her and her mother didn’t even know. After that Liesel gets handed off to Rosa and Hans Hubermann (mama and papa) her foster parents. At first, Liesel is struggling to be happy in Munich since she feels abandoned by her mother, she can’t read, she’s getting bullied, and she has to adapt to a different …show more content…
She continues to give him gifts and other things, she finds his sketchbook and she reads it, it has many things like him, Hitler, and Jewish things. Although she felt bad about reading it, she found out about his past and the struggles of being a Jew at the time. It’s been a few weeks and Max still hasn’t woken up and everyone (Mama, Papa, and Liesel) are all scared, papa keeps on saying things about him being dead and that upsets Liesel. Finally, Max wakes up while Liesel is at school and she is really happy, after school she goes to see him and it’s just pure happiness, someone she thought was dead wasn’t. Fast forward to a few years the war is almost over, papa is serving in the military and Max left, Max leaving affected Liesel but she knew it was safer for him. After the war, Max finally comes back and everyone is joyful. The war is finally over! Liesel went from a scared little girl to a brave young adult, her character changed a lot but it was a good change since it made her more a heroine. These are the reasons why I think change is good. And the author wrote the book to inform you about what happened during WWI-WWII while making the storyline
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 1944, the Jews of Hungary were relatively unaffected by the catastrophe that was destroying the Jewish communities of Europe in spite of the infamous Nuremberg Laws of 1935-designed to dehumanize German Jews and subject them to violence and prejudice. The Holocaust itself did not reach Hungary until 1944. In Wiesel's native Sighet, the disaster was even worse: of the 15,000 Jews in prewar Sighet, only about fifty families survived the Holocaust. In May of 1944, when Wiesel was fifteen, his family and many inhabitants of the Sighet shtetl were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The largest and deadliest of the camps, Auschwitz was the site of more than 1,300,000 Jewish deaths. Wiesel's father, mother, and little sister all died in the Holocaust. Wiesel himself survived and immigrated to France. His story is a horror story that comes to life when students in high school read this novel. Even though many students have not witnessed or participated in such horror, they relate to the character because Wiesel is their age. They cannot believe someone went through the nightmare he did at their age.
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.
Reluctance or stubbornness in ending impulsive actions can have consequences. In the Book Thief by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger’s inability to halt her dangerous habits put her and others’ lives in dangerous situations. Three main examples of Liesel’s dangerous activities are when she steals books, when she demonstrates kindness at improper times, and when she disrespects others for her own selfish reasons. In all these examples, there is always one moment where Liesel places her or others in harm’s way and narrowly escapes punishment.
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
Max showed her a side of the world that was technically forbidden for her German roots and family. Either way, her family housed a jewish person. Which was illegal at that time and punishable by death. Not a topic to take lightly. Anyways, Max wrote Liesel a book called “The Standover Man”. A quote from the book makes his story ironic. “It makes me understand that the best standover man I’ve ever known is not a man at all…” (Zusak, page 205, line 5-8) This is ironic because Liesel could be a man with her guts, but she is different. She doesn’t put up with any crap from anyone (but her parents of course), but she can also at the same time be very caring. She is as mean as an angry bull, but as nice as a caring mother with her newborn child. It’s kind of hard to think of any female being like that but that is how Liesel is
“I am haunted by humans” (Zusak 550). The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is about the horrors of World War II. Liesel and her family help out an old friend by hiding a Jew. Liesel also steals her first book when she at her brother’s funeral. Liesel Meminger’s remarkable actions like feeling good when she steals a book and her family hiding a Jew help demonstrate why Death is “haunted by humans”.
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.
“The final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.” This quote is from the famous diary of Anneliese Marie Frank; a holocaust victim and a modern time hero. In Markus Zusak’s novel, The Book Thief, Liesel Meminger is surviving through World War II just like Anne Frank. Although their circumstances are vastly different, both girls learn that the person they wish to become must be created through their own experiences and trauma. Narrated by Death, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old German girl who has been given up by her mother to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the small town of Molching in 1939. In the novel, Liesel’s greatest mountain is her internal conflict with herself and the propaganda
Elli talks about daily life in her neighborhood. Her mother does not show any compassion for her. When Elli complains of this, her mother brings up excuses that are unconvincing. Elli believes her mother does not care for her and that her brother is the favorite. Hilter’s reoccurring radio broadcast give nightmares to Elli, whos family is Jewish. The nights when the Hungarian military police would come and stir trouble did not provide anymore comfort for Elli. One night, her brother, Bubi, comes home with news that Germany invaded Budapest, the town where he goes to school. But the next morning, there is no news in the headlines. The father sends him back to school. He learns the next day that a neighbor’s son who goes to school with Bubi has said the same. The day after, the newspapers scream the news of the invasion. Bubi arrives home, and the terror begins.
It amazed me when I realized that the story isn't told by any narrator but it is told by Death. Although the topic is a hard topic to read about, I really got into the world and felt as if I was there. It helps me connect with this horrifying episode in history. The way that Markus described each character with the sense that they are going to die later on in the book intrigued me more and more. Death is fascinated by humans and the way they live and was curious about how we were capable of so much horror and destructions.He is an interesting character to talk about because he is very real but the Markus describes him in a way as if he was standing next to you. Death is always with everyone at all times. Although death sounds like a scary person to talk about, he also has his discomforts and these make his even more real. “I am haunted by humans”, “It kills me sometimes, how people die”. One of the main things he does is collect stories of courageous humans. Liesel is one of those interesting to him because of her courage and her personality. Stories like Liesel's help keep him going. He tells these stories, he says, "to prove to myself that you, and your human existence, are worth it". Throughout the book, Death is humorous, informative, or dark comments. He also likes to skip around in the story's timeline, revealing events to come and then apologizing for giving parts of the story away.
But she has to thank her relatives for everything because if it was not for them, they wouldn’t of been able to be in the United States and might’ve been caught by Hitler and she would have to go into a concentration camp. She survived the Holocaust after all the hardships that she had to face during the Holocaust (“Liane”). Her mother, sister, and herself were saved by her relatives because they helped her arrange a passage in the United States so she can spend the rest of her life in peace (“Liane”). After the Holocaust, she was still probably scared after her father's suicide because she never even got to say goodbye to her father. Also, she hadn’t thought how he died. It was why he died because she still wanted to know why her father ended his life. She wanted to know how he lost his job, but it may have been because of something to do with Hitler with Liane Reifs dad losing his job as a dentist. Back then many people were losing their jobs because of the war and other reasons so it might be correlated
Liesel understand that her mother left by circumstance due to the unraveling war unfolding in Germany, while Hitler was trying to reign complete control over all the political parties. During Hitler’s birthday one of his men gave a speech stating, “.. the evil machinations plotting to infect the motherland with its deplorable ways.” (Zusak 110.) The man refers to the ‘evils’ as,’ kommunisten,’ which is when Liesel starts to understand why her mother had to leave. She starts to put the
To begin with, Liesel is first abandoned by her mother and brother. Her brother dies on the way to Munich and her mother leaves her with a foster family.’’when Liesel searched the mailbox for a reply to her letter, it clearly broke her foster father’s heart...Where was she? What had they done to her?’’ (Zusak, 97) She attempts to wrote letters to her biological mother but Liesel never gets a reply. She then begins to think about what Rosa was saying about people taking her mother away for being a communist. Liesel understands her mother's betrayal when it's Hitler's birthday and he states ‘’The immoral.The Kommunisten!’’ (Zusak,110) she realizes that ‘’Her starving mother,her missing father.Kommunisten. Her dead brother. She saw it all clearly.’’ (Zusak,111) Her mother was a communist and wanted her to be safe. In order for that to happen she had to ‘’abandon’’ her.
During Markus Zusak’s book we observe the beauty of humans at many times. One of the most beautiful things a human does is when Max, the jew the Hubermanns are hiding from the nazis, gives Liesel a book that he made himself. But he says that “Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. On her birthday it was she who gave a gift to me”(Zusak 235). Max made this book for leisel by taking paint from the basement and painting over pages in Mein Kampf. He lets the pages dry and then he writes a story on them. He makes this book for Liesel because he can’t afford to buy one, and even if he could he can’t leave the house. But when he gives Liesel the book we also examine humans doing something so unbelievably nice. Liesel accepts max as a friend. Which in the long run will help Max out a lot, because he is locked in the basement and he can’t even go up stairs during the day. So someone who is there to talk to him, and someone for him to talk to will help him out. Throughout this book we watch their friendship grow. Liesel feels bad for Max because he is stuck in the basement so on a regular basis she will tell Max what the weather is like...