The Book Thief opens in a way which is unique to the reader with the narrator who turn out to be Death himself. In the Book Thief , the author Markus Zusak , crafts a marvelous tale through the eyes of Death. Death is the narrator of the Book Thief. He in a way is initially sardonic with a dorky sense of humor , but as the novel progresses and WW2 advances , he expresses weariness and remorse about having to collect so many souls. My first argument is that Death offers a unique and different approach when it comes to narrating the story. He is described as an Omniscient First-person point of view in the story. My second argument is that Death can foreshadow and hint important events of key characters in the book. My third argument is that …show more content…
Death can take the souls of peoples. The author , Markus Zusak chose Death with a struggle and great difficulty . He suited the World War setting and is the perfect choice for the First-person narration.
Death gives experience to the reader which in a way he can either tell or relate to the characters in the Book Thief. In addition to this , Death is an Omniscient First-person narrator. It's confusing because he sometimes refers to himself as I or talks to the reader. With this type of narration , Death can intervene and decide to take the souls of peoples. Most of the events take place in the town of Molching , with Death occasionally stepping in to provide relevant background Information about key characters. In the Book Thief , the first quote (pg.307) from Death . and he says " You really want to know what I look like? Find yourself a mirror while I continue". In this quote , Death directly speaks to the reader which he does so often. This quote is from the part "Deaths Diary". When he recommends us that the reader look in the mirror , he is reminding us that human kind is what caused the destruction. In World War 2 , Death is feeling irritable. Death is likewise crotchety (meaning bad-tempered or grumpy) in light of the fact that he feels misunderstood. He notes that the reaper image of a robe and sickle is mistaken. Deaths calls out the he looks just like us. The second quote (pg.550) " I am haunted by humans. How they can be so ugly and
glorious , and how their words and stories could be damming and so brilliant". In the last section of the Book Thief , Death considers what to tell Liesel about her story and human stories in general. Death wanted to tell her about "Beauty and Brutality" , but he concludes that there is nothing to tell her. Death is fascinated by the Human race. When death said the quote on (pg.550) it means that Death is haunted by the history of the Human race and it's contradictory record of things bad and good. When he says " I am haunted by Humans" , he actually wants to ask Liesel what she thinks of contradictory human nature. The third quote " I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles , house of cards , that's where they begin . Their great skill is their capacity to escalate". In this quote , Deaths shows struggling to understand the crowds frenzied desire for destruction and also suggests that it is humans nature to destroy things. So Death in the Book Thief is about war. Death basically wanting to tell Liesel about the " good and bad".
Guilt is a prevalent theme throughout The Book Thief. Liesel endures guilt multiple times, when she steals laundry money from Rosa, gets Max sick, verbally attacks Ilsa Hermann, and experiences the guilt of surviving. All of these acts caused Liesel to experience some sort of guilt which later causes her to perform questionable tasks.
Throughout the book, Death is seen as someone who is distraught and horrified of humanity’s inner workings. An example of this is when Death talks of the war and how he had to get through it. He says, “To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: ‘Get it done, get it done.’ So you work harder. You get the job done” (309). Death is being pushed to the limit by the war. It “is like the new boss who expects the impossible.” The unrealistic expectations force Death to “work harder.” He overworks himself and becomes extremely tired and exhausted by the time he got “the job done.” By speaking “incessantly”, war is constantly telling Death to get the job done. The continual work and pressure makes him overwork. Death is continually exhausted by the wars in which he has to participate in. He doesn’t enjoy the horrid acts that humanity commits. He uses the kindness of humanity as a way to redeem the negative qualities that destroy it. An example of this is towards the end of the book, when Death is with Liesel, thinking, “I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious, and its words and stories so damning and brilliant....I am haunted by humans” (550). Humanity extremely confuses Death. He doesn’t understand how it can be “so ugly and so glorious” at the same time. In this case, “the same thing” he
In the novel The Book Thief, setting and point of view affect the theme and book a lot. The point of view of this novel is third person omniscient and a little bit of second and first person when the narrator talks about himself or to the reader. The setting of the story is Nazi Germany and it is based on a young girl named Liesel Meminger and what her life was like during this time. Her story is told by the narrator, death. Mark Zusak, the author, uses setting and point of view to express the theme of the novel because there was so much death happening, Liesel encountered him so many times, causing him to be able to tell her story; without this setting and the narrator, the theme story would have been different.
Have you ever thought that Death is a person and not a thing? Well in the book The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Death is the narrator and tells the story. In this book, there is a girl named Liesel. Liesel is going to live with her foster parents, while she was traveling with her mom and her brother, her brother died. He was buried and near his grave was a book. It’s name was “The Grave Digger’s Handbook”. This was the first book she stole, and she only continues from here. She lives on Himmel Street and which she meet kids and she has to show her worth. That is not the important part. In the end of The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, it ends up really ironic. There are multiple ironic things in the book, it is practically filled with ironic and
In the poem Death Be Not Proud and The Book Thief the deception of death is dissimilar. In Death Be Not Proud the poet is insulting death. One example of this “Some have called thee Mighty and dreadful for thou art not so.” In that quote he is saying that don't think you are powerful because you are not. In The Book Thief death is the narrator, and death does not interpret himself as evil. For example, Death has real feelings. He experiences both sadness and joy in the novel. Personification is what makes them dissimilar. In the poem the personification of death creates a feeling that death is less powerful than we think. He undermines death by stating that he subject to the rules of "fate, chance, kings, and desperate men." Death is also personified as a slave that has many masters, which limits the people he takes. In the book death is personified as cheerful affable amiable and agreeable. Going against John Donne's portrayal of death as a coward. In The Book Thief death is quite observant colors and is not just dark and evil. As shown in this quote “People observe the colors of a day only at its beginnings and ends, but to me it's quite
"I am a result," claims Markus Zusak's Death in his novel The Book Thief (Zusak 8). This state of being for the persona commonly seen as malicious and destructive provides a good view of the unique image of Death presented in the novel. Far from the scythe toting, black hooded robe wearing Death of culture's common perception, the Death here is amiable, affable, and agreeable (1). He poses to the readers wishing to find out what he truly looks like to "find [themselves] a mirror" while he continues to narrate the tale. The being here hold much more of a resemblance to a beleaguered old man with an exhaustible deep supply of dry gallows humor. He is not taking joy in the deaths of humanity, or even causing them. He is the result of our dying. Someone (not just something) to clean up the mess we leave behind. And after millenia of witnessing humans at their best and worst, Death has developed a special love for them.
When it comes to death, everyone has a different perspective about it. One might think death is just a beginning, a key to open the door to the afterlife. A release, a way out to a different world. Others might think that death is simply a lesson of life. It teaches one not to waste his or her time but live to enjoy it, while it still last. Live and do whatever one desire before time runs out. Surely, death has many different purposes and meanings. In the short story “Bullet in the Brain” by Tobias Wolff. He uses death as a flashback and a final thought to show the reader the character’s life in the story. In the “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce, he uses death to teach the reader that one should stand up and protect the
Books have the power to both save and destroy. It depends on how the words are used in the book. If they are used in a positive matter they can save many things. However if they are in negative matter (brain-washing) then they have the power to destroy. The Book Thief has the power to save, because it makes us remember how it feels to be picked on and how it feels to have nothing or to suffer. It could save people, for example if a bully reads this he might have a change in heart and stop bulling other kids. People are power less without words, for example in The Book Thief page 446, “The best word shakers were the ones who understand the true power of words. They were the ones who could climb the highest. One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be without words." People can use words to convince others to do want they want them to do. For example in The Book Thief, Hitler used words to convince and make the Germans to do what he wanted them to do (world domination). In my essa...
For example, on page 3 death says, “You are going to die.” This quote, although strong and interesting, leads to confusion among many readers due to the fact that they don’t realize it is a huge foreshadowing of the end of the book. In addition to that on page 241 death says, “He didn’t deserve to die the way he did.” The “he” death is referring to happens to be Liesel’s best friend, the young boy with the hair of a lemon, otherwise known as Rudy. He had died, along with many others including Liesel’s mama and papa, in a tragic bombing. These quotes, both spoken directly by death, were found toward the beginning and middle of the book. Showing that the things death says are often times so honest and direct that they reveal the ending therefore leaving a slight possibility of Zuask losing a portion of his audience’s interest and or losing them all
The Character of death is given human qualities and characteristics personifies by nearly every other character in the story. The first example occurred when the little boy had told them "last night, the man was slain, upon his bench, face up, dead drunk again. There came a privy thief, they call him Death, Who kills us all round here, and in a breath He speared his through the heart". (Line 65-68). Personification and Irony are used throughout Geoffrey Chaucer's story "The Pardoners Tale". Death is made to seem like a real person too us. Also in example two, the publican joined in on the conversation and also added a warning on how many people have been killed around the village as if he were a serial killer on a loose rampage going around
How each author addresses the concept of death through word choice and structure is they both use word choice to describe the deaths of the people and a difference that they have is they talk about two different thing/objects.According to, "Night",it states,"When I awake at daybreak,I saw Juliek facing me,hunched over,dead." and according to ,"Death and Chocolate",it states,"Perhaps ten meters to my left the pale,empty-stomached girl was standing,frost-stricken."Both of those quotes show the similarities because it shows how they are both describing the perished by using work choice because it is describing and by using structure because it has very short length words which can create a sad and depressing tone.According to ,"Night",it states,"Next
German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe once said “We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out of discretion, and so disappears the most beautiful, the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverable for ourselves and for others.” Words have strength most individuals are unable to comprehend in their day to day lives, thus the true power words can be ineffectivly used, and is often lost admits the books, letters, and newspapers. However when words do inflict _______on someone, that person is changed forever. In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, words and literature on a variety of characters weather it is for better or for worse. For some its to
getting the theme of death across to the reader. By bringing the scene of the
It’s the early 1940s in a small town in Germany. On a normal day, adults would be working and children would be in school. But today, everyone is out on the sidewalks, silent. A large group of raggedy, lethargic, stick-thin people are walking, no trudging on the streets. One elderly man stands out from the crowd, he is especially frail. He stumbles, his legs too weak to hold his body up. People just watch on(Zusak 393*). In current times, this situation would’ve never happened, but during the Holocaust, this was acceptable, if the person was a Jew. The scene described in the beginning was one of the events in The Book Thief, a novel where an orphaned German girl, Liesel and her foster family try to scrape by during hard times. Throughout the
Second, the relationship between writing and death. Traditionally, death was a guarantee to immortality (e.g. the Greek narratives where by death, the hero gains immortality. Contemporarily, this notion has been altered, and writing is now linked to sacrifice. The narrator is used to forestall death. Where work had the duty of creating immortality, it now had the right to kill its author. After writing, the author is dead, but through the text, the author lives. The author becomes a victim of his own writing, and through his absence, his presence is guaranteed.