Demonization In The Book Thief

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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil but because of the people who don't do anything about it. In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, we see demonization is utilized to gain power numerous times through the use of the characters in the book. This book develops the theme of Horrors of Humanity.by showing the demonization through the use of power, in which concludes to Viktor Chemmel being the leader of the stealing gang, Franz Deutscher being the leader of the Hitler youth group, and even Liesel Meminger being involved with thievery and standing up for herself. All of these characters are uniquely different, yet still the same. In the novel, Viktor Chemmel, who is the replacement of Arthur Berg in the …show more content…

In the beginning of the book, Liesel is seen as an innocent uneducated young girl, but then starts to go through numerous tragedies. Such as the death of her brother, abandonment of her mother and the absence of her real father. Liesel then starts to steal and read books as an escapism because of the loss of her brother. She then joins a stealing gang, in which she continues to steal fruits, vegetables and other important foods from farms. “Twenty-four hours later, Liesel and Rudy braved the wire fence again and filled their sack. The problem showed up as they made their getaway. Christ! shouted Arthur. The farmer! It was his next word, however, that frightened. He called it out as if he’d already been attacked with it. His mouth ripped open. The word flew out, and the word was ax.” (Zusak 164). Liesel is now taking the food she steals for granted, in which she does not care if she gets in trouble. She is simply acting out. This leads her to doing wrongful things to gain more power, like stealing more books from the mayor's library to gain more knowledge. “The injury of words. Yes, the brutality of words. She summoned them from someplace she only now recognized and hurled them at Ilsa Hermann. “It’s about time,” she informed her, “that you do your stinking washing anyway. It’s about time you faced the fact that your son is dead. He got killed! He got strangled and

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