Death is everywhere. Everyone’s biggest fear is constantly hovering over them, waiting for the right time to take them away. A near death experience often brings out the truth that people have kept to themselves. In The Book Thief, the story was narrated in the point of view of death. In the book, The Book Thief, the narrator impacts the understanding of the theme in an intriguing and suspenseful manner. Death occurs in many scenes throughout the book. Unfortunately, Liesel is surrounded by the most of it. Liesel started out her life with only her mother and brother. Her brother and her were traveling with their mother by train to be given over to foster parents because their mother didn’t have the ability to care for them anymore. On their way there, …show more content…
“''The Book Thief'' offers us a believable, hard-won hope. That hope is embodied in Liesel, who grows into a good and generous person despite the suffering all around her, and finally becomes a human even Death can love. The hope we see in Liesel is unassailable, the kind you can hang on to in the midst of poverty and war and violence” (Green). This quote that a critic wrote expressed the enormous amount of hope that Liesel is able to hang onto throughout all the hardships she has to go through. “Indeed, everything is upside down in Zusak's Nazi Germany. Sounds are tasted, visions are heard, death has a heart, the strong do not survive, and your best chance of living may be a concentration camp” (Green). During the 1940’s, Nazi-Germany was extremely dangerous. Death surrounds thousands of Jews during that time period. Liesel and her family put themselves in risk of Death when
The death of Liesels brother affected her and caused her to be shy and not want to try and be happy again. This event is one of many events that show how death has affected Liesel as a person.
Liesel’s foster family and friends that she grown to appreciate are all decimated by a bomb. Shocked by the sudden loss of everyone she used to love, Liesel weeps and faints. Those moments are times when both the audience and principle characters truly understand the significance of death, and with further thought, realize that there have always been signs of death on display
In part one of the book, page 20, paragraph three it states “With one eye open, one still in a dream, the book thief--also known as Liesel Meminger--could see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead.” (Zusak 20) This is the first problem that Liesel has to overcome. Her brother dying, and having to start out a new life with a new
Liesel has realized she must respect the man who was the reason for her and her entire families suffering. She has realized she officially has lost her home, that she is completely isolated from the community. “It was quite a sight seeing an eleven year old girl try not to cry on church steps, saluting fuhrer”(Zusak 115). After losing all of these emotionally wrecking things Liesel learns and understands she needs to keep going forward. She refuses to give up she although times are rough manages to think, it could be worse.
Liesel, known as the book thief to the audience has a distinct passion for books and how much they mean to her. Stealing book after the book becomes a hobby for the young girl whose love of books is fostered by her foster father, Hans Hubermann. As Hans teaches Liesel how to read and write they develop an
Change is an inevitable aspect of life; however the most significant changes occur when an individual develops a sought after skill or learns imperative information. In the novel The Book Thief the novel’s main protagonist Liesel Meminger encounters numerous moments which help define her characterization as she grows as a character. Firstly one of Liesel’s most poignant moments occurs once she pieces together her vague past and during the same process discovers her reason for loathing Hitler. When Liesel heard the word communist being mentioned in a negative connotation at the book burning, she became stricken with fear as this word was all she knew of her past life. Liesel’s desire for answers on her Mother’s disappearance leads to her asking Hans if Hitler was one
One of the most important recurring themes throughout The Book Thief was Liesel’s relationships with all of the people in her life. She grows close with several different people, and trusts, loves, and cares for them all differently but equally. Three of those relationships will be explored more deeply; Liesel’s relationship with her foster father, Hans Hubermann, the Jewish man her family takes in, Max Vanderburg, and her best friend, Rudy Steiner. Liesel’s relationship with Hans is one of the most important, if not the most important, relationships in the novel. Hans is the first person Liesel trusts, and the person who stays with her and loves her until the end.
Liesel’s everyday routines were far more uneventful than Elie’s, in that she went to school with Rudy, came home, then read or spent time with with Max. She witnessed her brother’s unfortunate death at an extremely young age. “... they [Liesel and her brother] would soon be given over to foster parents. We now know, of course, that the boy didn’t make
When Liesel’s brother dies (Chapter 2), we see Liesel struggling to move on. Left at the doorsteps of Hans and Rosa Hubermann with no familiar faces to follow, she refuses to bathe. She has persistent nightmares, and it seems that she can not push past this grief. But in spite of her circumstances, she perseveres. She uses her ever-growing imagination (and the
He killed himself for wanting to live” (Zusak 503). While Michael deals with guilt by self destructing, Liesel, the main character, handles guilt using other methods. Liesel encounters guilt through the death of her loved ones in addition to the sadness of losing everything she had. She deals with this guilt by stealing books and reading with her Papa. By stealing books, she achieved the famous nickname, the Book Thief.
Through the pain and losses in her family, she begins to get motivated and is able to stick up for herself and others for what she feels is right. (Her father was killed because he felt communism was right). As Liesel grows up, she begins to re-evaluate her life, and creates a set of moral rules for herself instead of what society dictated for her. Liesel then begins to understand that her mouth (language) could be a blessing and a curse, and living under the control of the Nazi’s it changes her views on life. After books she reads, writes and steals, she learns more about herself, she evolves from a “powerless” character to a powerful character who can change the lives of many.
The theme of this book is learning to love and care for the people around. How I came to this conclusion is by how Liesel acts towards Max, her foster parents, Rudy, and her neighbors. Liesel cares for people even if they weren't like her and she doesn't understand why there is hatred in this world. She wanted the world to be a happy place for everyone including Jews to be friends with one another. On page 426 in ‘The Book Thief’, when Rudy’s father went to war Liesel could relate to Rudy because “her mother.
Growing as a Character Every event in our lives happens for a reason, whether it is to learn from our mistakes or to gain experience from them. In Markus Zusak's novel “The Book Thief,” Liesel Meminger uses her experiences with living in the 1940s to learn life lessons and experience first hand the many terrible things Hitler is doing to people around her. She learns how to deal with the many obstacles that are thrown at her. Liesel grows as a character by following her step-father’s footsteps in being a kind and generous person, going through childhood with her best friend Rudy, and being aware of what is going on around her by learning from Max.
‘That [Death] in a way was a metaphor for the idea that this book is about people doing beautiful things in a really ugly time.’ (Zusak, 2010) One of the central themes presented in The Book Thief is the idea of family. It is evident in the text that the idea of a family is not just limited to those in which we are inherently connected; it encompasses those we care for. Her arrival on Himmel Street, leaves Liesel struggling to face the abandonment she has experienced with her mother leaving her for a reason she does not understand and the devastating loss of her brother, Werner, whose ghost haunts her throughout the novel.
At first, Liesel is illiterate, but when she steals her first book at her brother’s funeral, and is abandoned by her mother, she turns to something she