In The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, the narrator, Death, tells the life story of a young girl named Liesel Meminger during World War II. He explains the events and challenges Liesel experiences due to Hitler’s words and influence. In this passage, the author uses diction, imagery, and details to help the reader imagine and have a deeper understanding of the events taking place and the character’s thoughts and feelings.…
In the chapter “The Sound of Sirens” in the book The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, is such a strong chapter filled with emotions. Max (a hidden jew) has been hiding from the Nazis in Liesel’s basement for the past twenty-two months. In the middle of the night, sirens go off warning the town to evacuate into bomb shelters. As Liesel and her family scramble with fear, they left Max behind, so they do not get caught for hiding a jew in their house. For Max, he is not allowed to leave the basement because people might see him in the widow. “There were stars,” he said. “They burned my eyes.” While the whole town has evacuated, my prediction was that Max walked upstairs knowing no one would see him, and looked outside for the first time in years. The…
Sometimes in literature, a character’s actions oppose the ideals, values, morals, etc. of his or her society. A character in The Book Thief who opposes his or her society is Rudy Steiner. Of course, there was a purpose for Zusak to make Rudy exactly the way he did.…
The power of words have a big impact in this world. What would be appealing without words? Even actions are worth a thousand words. Books wouldn’t exist without words. Markus Zusak, the author of The Book Thief demonstrates throughout the book the power of words.…
When Wiesel first reaches Auschwitz, he sees fire and smells the burning of flesh. Wiesel was disturbed when he figured out they were burning people. He wrote “Never shall I forget those flames that consumed my faith forever.” (Wiesel 34); this use of hyperbole draws attention to the traumatic experience he went through. He continues with repetitions and parallelism of “Never…
If there was a god, why would he/she be so harsh? The text is compared to the book Night by Ellie Wiesel and from the poems “Night over Birkenau” and “Harbach 1944”. The book Night tells the story of a young boy and his father fighting for their freedom from the Nazis; Ellie Wiesel tells the story of his experience of the Holocaust. Both of the poems show the journeys of people and how they pictured all of the madness. Ellie fights through many hardships, but comes out of the Holocaust victorious! Ellie and his father were both willing and strong throughout the Holocaust, but his father escaped a different way. The theme states that during survival, people think about needs rather than wants. This is clearly developed in the poems “Night over Birkenau” By Janos Piliszky and “Harbach 1944” and Night to show harshness, survival, and fear.…
In the Historical Fiction novel, The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak illustrates the importance of words and friendship during the Nazi rule in Germany. The first spark of friendship between Hans and Liesel ignites when they learn to read and write together. Because of Liesel's ability to read, Max and Liesel become instant friends. The importance of words and the kinship that comes with proves relevant throughout the entire story. The author uses the relationship of Hans and Liesel to demonstrate how reading and writing can bloom into a thriving friendship and the relationship of Liesel and Max to demonstrate how words can provide the ability to survive in a crisis.…
The act of theft is predominantly considered worldwide to be one of the most corrupt acts one can commit, it is even written in the Bible as the eighth commandment that one “shall not steal”. So it is particularly interesting when the act of theft is not used in a narrative not to show how iniquitous the villain is but rather to make a point about the protagonist of the story. Such is the case for Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. In the book thief Zusak uses the motif of thievery to as an act of empowerment for Liesel. It is representative of how Lisel is trying to take control back of her life in a time where she feels she has lost all control of the world around her. The act of stealing books is also significant as this can represent her taking knowledge back from her oppressors who wish to destroy it. The act of stealing is never in the novel portrayed as a crime of any sort, rather the act of theft flourishes into an act of liberation for Liesel.…
Liesel realizes how words can be good and evil. She learns that words and reading can bring families and communities together. When she is reading at the shelter, “Young kids [are] soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the crime scene... they [are] distracted now, by the girl with the book” (Zusak 381-382). When she reads at the shelter during the bomb raid, it gives the audience a sense of comfort and distraction. Because of her reading in the shelter, Frau Holtzapfel stops her grudge with the Hubermanns, and asks Liesel to read for her. Liesel realizes that words also have a good side, where the words have the power to bring people together. Liesel also comprehends that Adolf Hitler uses words to manipulate German citizens to carry out horrific facts, which cause a lot of deaths and suffering. So Liesel decides to create her own novel, so she can spread the good in words. Her last line ends with, “I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right” (Zusak 528). This shows how the power of words has impacted Liesel in good and bad ways. She shows that she wants to use the words for good, rather than evil. The fact that Liesel was illiterate and now she is writing a book to spread awareness is very impressive. In…
The surface elements discussed in this quote remind me of Thanksgiving time. After reading the list of food items I immediately also thought about a buffet. These happen to be some very tasty food items that no one would pass up on having seconds. One thing that caught me off guard was that the grandmother and granddaughter were able to take food during visiting day at the jail for the inmate; in this case he was the little girl’s father. I believe that this book was written by cultural insider. Prior to reading this, I had never came across a book which solely focused on a jail visiting day. My first im-pressions were negative. I would not want children to think that the majority of criminals in jail are African American. I did not know that there were au-thors who focused on covering…
Concentration camps showed us inhumanity on a scale previously unimagined. However the setting in place of such inhumane behaviour began some years before with the systematic dehumanising of the Jews by breaking down social structures and relationships and taking away their place in civil society. The novel shows that there is great inhumanity displayed from this personal journey of Elie Wiesel. The Jews were tortured every day for no reason at all other than for the SS officers’ own amusement. The SS officers treated the men as if they were animals, making them fight for food. Women, babies, old, sick, and handicapped were put into the crematoriums as soon as they arrived at the camps. The Germans stripped the Jews to nothing and took away everything close to them, separation from loved ones, isolation, transportation and the ruthless, cold actions towards them in the camps such as starvation and selections of the fittest. They killed people for no reason, with no remorse whatsoever. Tortures, being treated like animals, and being burned alive or killed were all things that led to the Jews feeling as if they were not human.…
When you read, do you ever felt like there is a recording playing in your head, telling the story to you? Have you ever noticed that each writer has a “voice” that is completely their own? Why do all of the great authors have a “sound” exclusive to themselves? Using precise wording and distinctive phrases, writers can manipulate your thoughts and emotions to help the reader understand the content of the literature. This is especially helpful when the subject matter is uncomfortable and harsh, such as the lives of inmates in the Nazi concentration and death camps during World War II. Relating to this book, Wiesel was imprisoned in Buchenwald and Auschwitz for being a Jew, and in particular uses his style to tell the tale of those two camps’…
The power of words…it is shown in this book, it shows how people are destroyed and how people are saved from words. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak shows his audience that words have the power to heal or destroy. Liesel, the main character and the book thief, Max the jew, and Hitler the fuhrer are the ones who show how they have used words to affect others in both positive and negative ways . Throughout the story it shows Liesel's great passion for books as well as her dedication to learn how to read.…
“Nazi’s were gathering fuel…Liesel was witness to men and women knocking on doors, asking people if they had any material that they felt should be done away with or destroyed.”…
Hitler’s use of almost an enigmatic, opera type use of words (he admired Wagner) that achieved his mass appeal, did also lead to the war. It was perhaps then necessary to breakdown language to reinvent it. The distortion and the fragments not only hint at the former but to a unity hat feeds to be rediscovered. The half-sentences make the reader seek to complete them and participate in the call for a search of a new unity and identity which is…