Its oppressive force lurks everywhere you go. Burning behind the eyes of one, lapping up the souls of another. Starting wars. Destroying lives. You can try to run, but you can’t hide. It is lethal, and you can’t escape. We are all victims.
Good morning/afternoon my fellow book club members, my name is Savannah Higgins and I’m here to address the concept of discrimination in ‘The Book Thief’ by Markus Zusak.
Despite the leap in time, humanity has advanced no further in its acceptance and tolerance of those who are different. Discrimination has always been present throughout past societies and will more than likely persist in future generations. It is Australia’s most detrimental and prevailing issue, with victims ostracized, bullied and even suffering physical abuse. In our society today, homosexuals in particular are still falling victim to unjust oppressive societal attitudes. But why? They are still human, are they not?
Throughout this reflective address, the relevance in our modern society of this issue explored in the novel will be analyzed and evaluated in regards to the representations of concepts, identities, times and places; ideas, attitudes and values; and the perspectives of both the past and present societies. It is asked that any questions and/or comments be saved until the end.
Through ‘The Book Thief’, Markus Zusak has demonstrated his writing to be poignant, poetic, and profound. He is a writer of brilliance, a poet, the Picasso of words, a literary marvel.
Zusak’s portrayal of discrimination within the book delivered by the Nazis was shown to be extremely blatant and shameless, the author revealing and reinforcing the stereotypical German concept that the Jewish people were treated as bug-eyed cesspools...
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...he case – everybody loved them some Han’s – but because they feared that doing so would have themselves put in that position or get in trouble? Yeah, you know what I’m talking about hey? Another example was during the parade of the Jews, where no one intervened to help the malnourished man, because they all knew that if they did, the Nazi’s would crack the shits and they would suffer the same consequence as Hans or worse. It is clear that the perspectives that were privileged in the 1930s were the Nazi’s and Nazi sympathizers, you’d have to be as blind as a bat to not see that. They possessed the power of fear to enforce and propaganda their discriminative and unjust political agenda amongst the Germans. It was the outcasts that weren’t even given the time of day, whose perspectives were shamelessly ignored, the Jews forced to accept and endure a submissive role…
Sometimes, people discriminate one thing, but strongly oppose the discrimination of another thing. In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, this issue is very much expressed throughout the story. This thought-provoking story takes place in Maycomb, Alabama during a time when there’s a rape trial against a falsely accused African American named Tom Robinson. There is also a discrimination, of sorts, towards a man named Boo Radley, by three young children named Jeremy “Jem” Finch, Jean Louise “Scout” Finch, and Charles “Dill” Baker Harris. Both Boo Radley and Tom Robinson are similar in their own ways through their inherent goodness.
In this analysis includes a summary of the characters and the issues they are dealing with, as well as concepts that are seen that we have discussed in class. Such as stereotyping and the lack of discrimination and prejudice, then finally I suggest a few actions that can be taken to help solve the issues at hand, allowing the involved parties to explain their positions and give them a few immersion opportunities to experience their individual cultures.
Human nature has many elements that reveal the growth and personality of a person. In Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief”, the author successfully portrays various aspects of human nature through Hans’ conflicts that originate from the tough reality that he lives in. Elements of human nature can be seen as a result of Hans’ constant struggles with guilt, kindness, and love.
The vast literature on Nazism and the Holocaust treats in great depth the first three elements, the focus of this book, is t...
The novel The Book Thief is a book about a young girl by the name of Liesel Meminger. Observing the life of this young girl is not easy as this is the time of Hitler’s reign in Germany. In a short period of time, this girl faces many difficulties. More than any child should ever have to encounter. She has to deal with being abandoned by her mother, the death of her younger brother, and relocation to another part of Germany. Immediately when Liesel arrives to Molching, her life is forever changed. She is forced to live with two strangers, now her new mama and papa. Liesel faces much abuse both at school and at home. At school she is made fun of for her illiteracy and at home, mama speaks very rudely to her calling her a swine and other insults.
The Holocaust was not perpetrated by a small band of Nazis but by “ordinary Germans” in the hundreds of thousands. The abrupt transformation of Germans from bakers, bankers and bureaucrats to mass murderers was due to a particularly virulent strain of anti-Semitism. Goldhagen’s indictment focuses on the citizenry’s complicity in three of Nazi Germany’s institutions of mass killing; the Ordnungspolizie (the Nazi Police Battalions), the work camps where Jews were incarcerated, and the death marches from the those camps led by prison guards and their charges near the end of the war. While Goldhagen efficiently states the thesis to his dissertation, his organizational style leaves much to be desired.
In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, many characters develop an understanding of the power of words which results in many characters being negatively impacted by the theme.
Racial discrimination has been an issue among different cultural groups, ethnic races and many religions. It is an issue that has stopped people from becoming well diversitized and embracing multiculturalism, especially during the olden days where slavery and wars were a huge part of the world. Racism has created a separation between people, causing many dilemmas’ to arise. This problem has been seen and touched upon throughout many works of literature and verbal presentations. A discourse on racial discrimination will be used to exemplify how individuals abuse their rights, categorize humans and ill treat others through an exploration of the texts in, Snow Falling On Cedars and The Book of Negroes. These novels have given an insight of the discrimination between different classes of people and the unfavorability of one’s kind.
"Perpetrators." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust. University of South Florida, 1 Jan. 1997. Web. 19 May 2014. .
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.
For thousands of years, the Jewish People have endured negative stereotypes such as the "insects of humanity." As Sander Gilman pointed out, the Nazi Party labeled Jews as "insects like lice and cockroaches, that generate general disgust among all humanity" (Gilman 80).1 These derogative stereotypes, although championed by the Nazis, have their origins many centuries earlier and have appeared throughout Western culture for thousands of years. This fierce anti-Semitism specifically surfaced in Europe’s large cities in the early twentieth century, partially in conjunction with the growing tide of nationalism, patriotism, and xenophobia that sparked the First World War in 1914. Today, one often learns the history of this critical, pre-WWI era from the perspective of Europe’s anti-Semitic population, while the opposite perspective—that of the Jews in early twentieth-century European society—is largely ignored. Questions like: "How did the Jews view and respond to their mistreatment?" and "How were the Jews affected mentally and psychologically by the prejudices against them?" remain largely unanswered. Insight into these perplexing social questions, while not found in most history books, may be discovered in a complex and highly symbolic story of this era: "The Metamorphosis" by Franz Kafka. Through the use of an extended metaphor, "The Metamorphosis" provides both a basic summary of the common views held against Jews and offers an insight as to what may be the ultimate result of Europe’s anti-Semitism. This work serves as a social commentary and criticism of early twentieth-century Europe. It fulfills two main functions: first, it provides an outline of the s...
...at the power of words entailed in the novel, The Book Thief, words really are very powerful. Three examples were given above as a few powers that the novel captured throughout the story. Words can manipulate and divide people, but at the same time connect people. Despite the fact that words have so many contradicting powers, one can use the words to their full extent when their intent is moral. In fact, words are meaningless if it doesn’t have an impact on an individual, society, or world. Words can do both good and bad, however, if one uses them in a proper way, it can result in a positive statement for our world. The novel gives the readers the lesson that we should comprehend the power of words and use words in a moral way. Just remember this: “I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.” (pg. 413)
Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief (2005), and Steven Spielberg, director of Schindler’s List (1993), both use their works to portray the theme of racism in Nazi-era Germany. Racism today affects millions of people daily, with 4.6 million people being racial discrimination in Australia alone. However, in Nazi-era Germany, Jewish people were discrimination because they weren’t part of the ‘master race’, causing millions to suffer and be killed. To explore this theme, the setting, characters, conflicts and symbols in both The Book Thief and Schindler’s List will be analysed and compared.
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
When one hears the words “LGBT” and “Homosexuality” it often conjures up a mental picture of people fighting for their rights, which were unjustly taken away or even the social emergence of gay culture in the world in the 1980s and the discovery of AIDS. However, many people do not know that the history of LGBT people stretches as far back in humanity’s history, and continues in this day and age. Nevertheless, the LGBT community today faces much discrimination and adversity. Many think the problem lies within society itself, and often enough that may be the case. Society holds preconceptions and prejudice of the LGBT community, though not always due to actual hatred of the LGBT community, but rather through lack of knowledge and poor media portrayal.