Examples Of Kindness In The Book Thief

When the word ‘beauty’ comes up, most people think about beauty in a physical sense, but there is more to beauty than what meets the eye. A person may seem beautiful on the outside, but true beauty comes from within and from the heart. Kindness is one type of beauty and kindness is the type of beauty that has the power to make an impact on people’s lives and spread love to other people. Kindness is beautiful because of the simplicity of it and when it is an unexpected and rare thing that is what makes kindness all the more beautiful. In the novel, The Book Thief, Marcus Zusak shows how beauty can still be found in the midst of the brutality that is present during the war through kindness. Zusak exhibits the beauty of kindness through friendship,

acts of kindness, and words.
Death says “The consequence of this is 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 522). One way that beauty is being presented during the war is the unlikely friendship between Max and Liesel. This special bond is formed because of books and words, which is one of the ways that Liesel and Max escape the brutality of the war. For example, Max gives Liesel a book called The Standover Man that he writes for her, on her birthday the book. This story, Max writes shows Liesel and Max’s friendship because in the book he says “Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. On her birthday, it is she who gave a gift to me” (Zusak 235). What Lisel gives max is a sense of belonging because of her acceptance, friendship and unconditional love and concern that she shows towards Max, despite the environment that she grows up in. Through the friendship of Liesel and Max, Zusak shows how in an environment where there is a lot cruelty and hatred, beauty can still be found in it and that is what is shown using Max and Liesel’s friendship, because of him being a Jew and she being a German youth. In the basement of the Hubbermanns house all walls and barriers come down and it is just two people who love and genuinely care for one another and that is what makes their friendship truly beautiful.
Another example of how Zusak shows the beauty of kindness that is present during the war despite cruelty is when Hans saves Max by giving him a home to stay in and by keeping him out of harm’s way or when "The Jew stood before him, expecting another handful of derision, but he watched with everyone else as Hans Hubermann held his hand out and presented a piece of bread, like magic” (Zusak 394).

Another example would be when Rudy “arrived first, with cluttered breath and what appeared to be a toolbox. With great trepidation, he approached the cockpit and watched the pilot, gauging if he was alive, at which point, he still was… From the toolbox, the boy took out, of all things, a teddy bear. He reached in through the torn windshield and placed it on the pilot’s chest” (Zusak 9). As it was stated before, Kindness is beautiful because of the simplicity of it and when it is an unexpected and rare thing that is what makes kindness all the more beautiful. The moments in which Rudy and Hans give comfort to the less fortunate or unfortunate may be simple but because of the rarity of kindness shown towards Jews or the dying during Hitlers reign it makes their kindness and generosity even more beautiful than what it would be had it been in a normal setting. Compared to the amount of cruelty and suffering that goes on during the war, the acts of kindness that the characters in the novel display are undoubtedly

beautiful.
Markus Zusak shows how the characters in The Book Thief overcome the brutality that is presented during the war and commit acts of kindness. The friendship that Max and Liesel develop is beautiful and shows how beauty can be found in a destructive and cruel reality. When Hans also shows this kindness when he gives one of the starving Jews in the Jewish camp a piece of bread and shows the contrast between the amount of beauty present in the face of all of the apparent brutality. In his novel, Zusak shows a juxtaposition of humans because of the immense amount of pain and suffering that they can cause but also the immense amount of love and kindness that they display.