“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 …show more content…
that besieges her. Being a child born in a generation brainwashed to believe monstrous ideals, Liesel must learn to differentiate the truth from the lies fabricated by Hitler and his followers. My personal mountain is relatable to Liesel’s as I struggle against the constant comparison with other people’s lives. My inevitable exposure to social media and peer pressure mirrors Liesel’s vulnerability against the Nazis’ propaganda. They both attack a person psychologically, which is far more powerful than any physical threat. Currently, society is also facing its own mountain as the invasion of online privacy has yet to be solved. This is a corruption that affects the entire world as people can no longer trust the devices they have learned to love. These problems makes one wonder if we can trust the news and the media if the information is actually harming the general population. It also makes one wonder whom can we trust if the government and large companies we depend on are spying into our daily lives. In The Book Thief, Liesel battles with her own philosophy as she learns the reality behind the deceit in the words Hitler preaches as she struggles to accept the kind of society she lives in.
One major scene occurs moments before the bonfire of books. A series of events trigger recollections of Liesel’s past family which causes her to construe the reason why her family is separated. Liesel finally asks Hans, “Is my mother a communist?” (115). This question acts as Liesel’s confirmation of her thought that the Nazis has indeed taken her mother away just like how they took her father for being a communist. Liesel is perplexed because she knows her mother is not a bad person at all, yet, her personal experiences with her mother contradicts with the ideals she has been taught; her mother is a criminal for believing in a utopia different than Hitler’s. In the following scene, Liesel is slapped by Hans Hubermann right before he said, “You can say that in our house… But you never say it on the street, at school, at the BDM, never!” (115). It pained him to punish Liesel and he longs to embrace and comfort her, but he was forced to take drastic actions to protect Liesel from being taken away by the Gestapo. Hans understands that he is Liesel’s sole protector and he shall act as a shield along Liesel’s journey to find her truth. Hans’ actions acts as an example for Liesel to follow. He tells Liesel to never admit her thoughts in public but he tells her that she can in private when she is safe from prying eyes and ears. Hans himself is hiding his insurgent activities behind closed doors. He hides a Jew in his basement, fully knowing it could very well kill him and his
family. Education is a powerful tool Hitler uses to his advantage. He created schools that mandated students to worship him and his beliefs. The school Liesel attends is an example of Hitler’s brilliant but dreadful mind, “Being female, Liesel was enrolled into what was called the BDM… The first thing they did was make sure your “heil Hitler” was working properly” (40). Attending an environment devoted to the Fuhrer is not healthy. School promotes community, integrity, and long lasting principles upon the students; it is essentially the greatest form of propaganda. The school is Liesel’s biggest obstacle that she must conquer. If she does not, her mindset will be influenced by the educators instructed by Hitler. Liesel reaches her summit when Max leaves the Hubermann’s home. In the scene, “At just after 11 pm that same night, Max Vandenburg walked up Himmel Street with a suitcase full of food and warm clothes…. He could not see the window, but she can could see him, she waved back and he did not wave back” (397). At this scene, Liesel lost a another important figure in her life due to the Nazis. This experience is very similar to when Liesel lost her mother. She experiences another internal struggle where she is given an ultimatum to trust her own experiences or follow Hitler’s lead. She was taught that Jews are heartless creatures that only bring demise, therefore Max must be bad. However, Max has been everything but bad. Max brought happiness, joy, friendship, and everlasting memories to Liesel. It was in that very moment that Liesel reached her conclusion that Hitler is wrong. It is evident that Liesel has learned to not shy away the problem in front of her when she and Rudy handed out bread to the Jewish prisoners behind the Nazis backs. The younger generation brings hope for a better community by rebelling against Nazi, Germany. Her book is also proof of her mountain’s consequence as she writes, “I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right” (528). In the novel, Liesel has her share of experiences with words. They have harmed her and protected her, and she herself has used them to heal and hurt another human being. She correlates her experiences with how Hitler rules the nation. Liesel understands the power of words and she refuses to crumble beneath them. Liesel’s mountain is akin to mine as I struggle against the power of social media. In this generation, social media is a prominent form of communication and entertainment. However, this form of entertainment is not mentally healthy as we adore the pictorial perfection that is portrayed through these outlets. Social media makes us feel depressed about our own lives for not seeming as exciting and perfect. On top of that, we obsess over the amount of likes we get on a post or picture to gain assurance of our status in society. This is very similar to Liesel’s mountain because she is also forced to follow Nazism or be taken away by the Gestapo just like how I am forced to follow a certain “rule of society” or risk being outcasted. It has become my mountain to always compare myself to others of my age though social outlets. I always feel that I have to seem more exciting or more fun than my peers. I admit that I am guilty of manipulating the things I put into social media. I only show people what I want them to see and I discard of the ugly parts of my life. This is relatable to Liesel because she has secrets of her own which she hides from even her best friend; she has a hidden Jew in her basement and she hates the Nazi. My greatest obstacle is accepting all the false information other people are forcing upon me. In social media, you see a trend of beautiful pictures of girls and women posing a certain way with their makeup done perfectly. It imposes a certain standard that I must achieve in my mind and I have seen many people crash so hard just to gain the extra popularity. It is ridiculous and heartbreaking to see my peers change themselves for the sake of approval. In The Book Thief, one must change their beliefs and personal judgement to save themselves from the Nazis. Just like how many of my personal acquaintances have willingly accepted that they are “not good enough,” the majority of the Germans also accepted Nazism to be a new way of life. I am grateful for my family whom keep me intact. The strict restrictions given upon me by my parents may seem irritating now but I understand the reasons why they will not let me magnify my vanity for surface appearances. I like to think of them as Hans who protect me from the propaganda that I face on a daily basis. I don’t think I can possibly ever reach my summit in this mountain. It is impossible to abolish social media from my life and I will always compare myself to others. A healthy amount would not hurt as long as I remember that looks and appearances aren’t everything. Since the invention the the world wide web, the internet is asking us to redefine what we consider private. In the article, “Making Sense of Snowden,” by Political Quarterly, they write, “...the NSA and GCHQ now have access not just to the ‘metadata’ but to the content of a huge proportion of the phone calls, internet searches and online transactions made by ordinary citizens, in their own and other countries.” The power of data can be used to predict and analyze what we are going to do and many large companies and the government take full advantage of that. Large corporations, especially technology companies, analyze our web searches and shopping habits. For the most part, the companies will send the person streams of ads and commercials in hope that they will buy the products. Government organizations like the NSA eavesdrop into our conversations, emails and text messages. It is society’s greatest mountain to solve the problem of protecting our information. Mathematicians Paul Syverson, Nick Mathewson, and Roger Dingledine believe they have found the answer to online privacy. In their research paper, they wrote,”Tor works on the real-world Internet, requires no special privileges or kernel modifications, requires little synchronization or coordination between nodes, and provides a reasonable tradeoff between anonymity, usability, and efficiency….Onion Routing is a distributed overlay network designed to anonymize TCP-based applications like web browsing, secure shell, and instant messaging.” People can now read and write without leaving a data trail behind them which may be used against them. Tor gives everyone an equal voice and freedom that cannot be obtained through the surface web. This network is a haven for many people all around the world. In the middle east, Reem al Assil, a Syrian human rights activists uses Tor to escape the surveillance conducted by the Syrian regime. Tor protects her from being caught by the police because they do not have proof of her rebelliance. However, the greatest obstacle with this system is the dark side of the internet. Many people use Tor as a tool to help other people but many others take advantage of the fact that Tor leaves no connection leading to them. Crimes and the black market thrive in such conditions. Online privacy is solved by Tor but the dangers behind anonymous actions is far more dangerous than filtered, supervised networks. Nobody wins in this situation. Monsters are not real but humans are. There are people that strip away basic human rights from other humans and destroy them from the inside out. Examples of human cruelty can be found in the Book Thief where Liesel struggles with corrupt propaganda, it is found in my mountain where I struggle with the stress that comes from social media, and it is found in society’s mountain where it struggles with it’s new philosophy of privacy and inability to give full protection of one’s data from being abused by other humans. Hitler most likely didn’t think of himself as a bad person. The people that post on social outlets aren’t always bad people but they unintentionally harm others. The creators of the internet are not bad people but they have created a home for more monsters to thrive. All humans are monsters. It is up to us to choose what kind of monster we want to become and the monsters whom we want to affect us.
“The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is narrated by death and begins when Liesel’s brother dies on a train with her and her mother. At her brother’s burial, she steals her first book, “The Grave Digger’s Handbook” and soon after is separated from her mother and sent to live with foster parents, Hans and Rosa Hubermann, in Molching, where the majority of the book takes place. At school, Liesel is teased because she can’t read so Hans teaches her to read when she wakes up from her frequent nightmares about her brother’s death. Hans is a painter and an accordion player and also plays the accordion for her after her nightmares. Liesel grows very close with Hans and also becomes close friends with her neighbor Rudy Steiner who constantly asks her to
In Markus Zusak’s novel, the book thief, Liesel Meminger is surrounded by death and fear as that is the norm in the 1930’s. Liesel is a strong young girl who has been deeply affected by her brother’s death and her mother leaving her and finds comfort in ‘The Grave Digger’s Handbook’, the book she stole at the site of her brother’s burial. Throughout the novel Liesel finds comfort in other books and reads them to escape the terrible reality that is Nazi Germany. Together with books she overcomes obstacles she wouldn't have been able to do without them
A example why people are brutal in The Book Thief is when the bomber planes were dropping bombs on the small town killing many people. My thoughts on this is even though the Nazi started this doesn’t mean they should kill innocent families.
In The Book Thief, author Markus Zusak tells the tragic story of Liesel Meminger and her experiences in 1939 Nazi Germany. Zuzak incorporates compelling literary devices such as toe curling foreshadowing, personification, and vivid imagery in the form of simile and metaphors to grasp the readers’ interest. Zusak’s use of various literary devices helps to deepen the text and morals of the story, and makes the dramatic historical novel nearly impossible to put down.
Hans can’t help to offer a piece of bread to one of the prisoners and is beaten along with the prisoner for this act of nobility. He is frightened that the Nazi will search his house and discover Max. That same night Max leaves Himmel Street. Hans is sent to war as his punishment and Alex Steiner is also conscripted for not permitting Rudy be part of a special training school. With Hans and Max gone, Liesel does her best to go on. She reads to the inhabitants of Himmel Street in the bomb shelter during air raids, robs food with Rudy, and helps Rosa who is devastated by Hans’s departure. The last book she steals is called “The Last Human Stranger” at this point she is frustrated and
Liesel experiences abandonment throughout her life, and the novel during a suppressed time in World War II Germany. Through her experiences Liesel’s learns to equate abandonment with love knowing that circumstance have forced her loved ones to leave her.
This realization, although suspected by the narrator for a long time, shows the true irony of Liesel’s thefts: that she never needs to steal them. When she steals her last book, The Last Human Stranger, she even takes a plate of cookies and leaves a note. Although none of these books are featured as heavily as her first few thefts, their titles reference parts of Liesel’s struggles such as her relationship with Max, her role in uplifting her community in the bunker, her continuing education, and her status being the only survivor of the final bombing. In conclusion, the books which Liesel steals are very influential in her development through the course of the novel, with the titles themselves references other parts of her life.
“‘Book burning’ refers to the ritual destruction by fire of books or other written materials. Usually carried out in a public context, the burning of books represents an element of censorship and usually proceeds from a cultural, religious, or political opposition to the materials in question.” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum)
The heavily proclaimed novel “The Book Thief” by Markus Zusak is a great story that can help you understand what living in Nazi Germany was like. Throughout the story, the main character, Liesel goes through many hardships to cope with a new life in a new town and to come to the recognition of what the Nazi party is. Liesel was given up for adoption after her mother gave her away to a new family, who seemed harsh at first, but ended up being the people who taught her all the things she needed to know. Life with the new family didn’t start off good, but the came to love them and her new friend, Rudy. As the book carried along, it was revealed that the Hubermanns were not Nazi supporters, and even took in a Jew and hid him in their basement later on in the book. Liesel became great friends with the Jew living in her basement, Max, who shared many similarities which helped form their relationship. Both of
In this essay I will talk about The Book Thief Characters. The characters are Liesel, Rudy, And Max. I Will talk about how they are Influenced by society in This Book/Movie. I am going to three Paragraphs about these three characters. This essay is going to be a Compare and Contrast Essay.
While the story is focused on Liesel, it’s told through the perspective of Death. Death, of course, is what takes your soul from your body and takes you to the afterlife. “It suffices to say that at some point in time, I will be standing over you…” (Zusak 4). Liesel is just 9 years old at the beginning of the book. After losing her family she feels hopeless. But eventually she is somewhat happy with her new family and Max, who is hiding in their basement. She becomes intrigued by books and writing. One day, she steals and book from a book burning, which was a serious crime in Nazi Germany and she’s seen by the Mayor’s wife Isla Hermann. Isla invites Liesel to her library and that leads to Liesel becoming more obsessed with writing. She eventually comes to realize that along with the hope that the written word brings-the stories Max wrote for her and even her own writing-is also the source of her pain and suffering because of Hitler’s propaganda. This is one of the things that...
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.
Death states that, “I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both” (Zusak 491). This book shows us human doing things that weren’t even imaginable before this point. Many people give into ideas that were lies. But, we also watch a few people go out of their way and sacrifice everything for a man they barely even know. They do everything they can to keep him safe and alive. They work harder, the get another job, and they even steal. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, death examines the ugliness and the beauty of humans.
Everyone is obviously different, but the personal qualities of a person and external situations that are occurring in the world around them can create similarities between people who have vast differences. In The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, this idea is very clearly shown through the lives of Liesel and Max. Although they come from vastly different backgrounds, the situations around them and their personal qualities reveal similarities between their lives. In The Book Thief, Max and Liesel’s lives have much in common, such as their love of literature and the impact on their lives as a result of Nazi persecution. However, they also differ in many aspects of their lives such as the degree of freedom that they were able to exercise and their attitudes toward life.
In The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, beauty and brutality is seen in many of the characters. Rudy, Liesel, and Rosa display examples of beauty and brutality often without realizing what exactly they are doing, because it is a part of their human nature. Zusak not only uses his characters, but also the setting of the novel in Nazi Germany to allude to his theme of the beauty and brutality of human nature. The time in which the novel is set, during World War II, displays great examples of beauty and brutality, such as the mistreatment of the Jews. As a result of this time period, the characters have to go through troubling times, which reveals their beautiful and brutal nature in certain circumstances. Zusak uses his characters and their experiences to demonstrate the theme of the beauty and brutality of human nature in the novel.