Book Thief Imagery

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Can one imagine life during the catastrophic World War II? In The Book Thief, by Mark Zusak, one is most definitely able to envision the damage of daily lives with the aid of Death as the narrator. The novel follows the protagonist, Liesel Meminger, who experiences her youthful years during the war. She endures countless losses and tragedies. The ongoing war and Liesel’s adventures are greatly correlated. Throughout The Book Thief, Mark Zusak utilizes imagery and focalization to illustrate the deadly WWII.
One of the literary elements Zusak uses to exemplify the harshness of the Holocaust is imagery. When the protagonist, Liesel Meminger, finds her town annihilated due to civilian bombing, visual descriptions are added to intensify the significance …show more content…

. . snowflakes of ash fell so lovelily you were tempted to stretch out your tongue to catch them, taste them. Only, they would have scorched your lips. They would have cooked your mouth” (Zusak 13). The quote exhibits how the war bombs transforms the sky’s color and created blazing ashes. The detailed words such as “scorched” and “cooked” instead of burned allows the reader to conceptualize the horrifying product of ashes being in one’s mouth. The focalizer applies several of the five senses, like touch, sight, and taste, to describe the effects of war. This aids the reader in imagining one’s life in Germany during WWII. To substantiate, this article contributes a related vision. Color imagery is utilized to describe the sky being the color of Jews and the anguish in Jews’ eyes in extermination camps (Smith). This claim advocates how colors are correlated to objects affected by WWII. The shade of the German sky was transformed due to the deaths of more than a million Jews and their passings were so substantial that empyrean was filled with the victims. Furthermore, Jews’ eyes were altered from hopeful to suffering because of their loss, forced labor, and trauma from Nazi …show more content…

To give an example, Death, the focalizer, feels compassion for a little girl who has lost everything she loves. “Please, again, I ask you to believe me. I wanted to stop. To crouch down. I wanted to say: ‘I’m sorry child.’ But that is not allowed” (Zusak 13). In this example, Liesel’s town and loved ones were blown into bits as an effect of warfare during WWII. Death expresses the urge to comfort her. This illuminates how Death narrates with empathy. These compassionate inner thoughts from the focalizer allows the reader to recognize that a situation must be genuinely horrific if Death himself can be empathetic. To expand, an article shares a similar perspective. The dramatic effect of war in the novel is accumulated by Death’s ability to listen to the inner voices of Jews, good-hearted soldiers, and German citizens (De Oliveira and Maggio). The power to access war victim thoughts permits the reader to know more than one usually would. It allows the focalizer to zoom in on actual examples of people who encountered the consequences of World War II. The reader can be given the view of the different victims and the grieving. Likewise, the writer conveys the destruction of war with potent focalization when Liesel thinks about Max, the Jew living in her house, and if he will survive town bombing. While Liesel hides into a bomb-safe basement, the narrator mentions, ". . . I know that Liesel Meminger was