With the increase of ongoing conflicts and violence, the amount of death and destruction has increased significantly in these past years. But what causes these conflicts? These conflicts are guided by words, the deadliest weapon yet the most impactful healer. In a single sentence, the powerful can change the course of a nation. Similarly, through the impact of Hitler, Zusak’s “The Book Thief” illustrates how words can catalyze change and shape actions. Zusak uses Hitler’s propaganda to exemplify how words can infect opinions. This impact is clearly shown in a young Liesel, who is sitting on a train with her mom to go to her new foster home and falls asleep and starts dreaming. Death, the narrator of the story, depicts her dream as such: “Prior …show more content…
In the dream, she was attending a rally at which he spoke, looking at the skull-colored part in his hair. “Wie gallen’s dir heut?” (20-21) By using Liesel’s dreams, Zusak accentuates the lurking power of propaganda and its impact on young minds. Death describes Liesel as “listening contentedly” and looking at the “perfect square of [Hitler’s] mustache”, implying that Liesel thinks of Hitler as a kind and inspiring person. It is later proven that her parents are communists, yet despite this, Liesel dreams of Hitler in a positive setting. Her situation and the contradicting dream proves that propaganda seeps even into the subconscious mind of young Liesel. The impact of Hitler’s words upon his nation is further exemplified by the widespread antisemitism demonstrated throughout the book, including a scene where …show more content…
Hitler’s words caused the people of Molching to band together and burn banned books. When the party arrives at Molching to burn banned books, the speaker tells the city, “‘We put an end to the disease that has been spread through Germany for the last twenty years, if not more!’ (...) ‘The immoral! The Kommunisten!’ (...) ‘Die Juden!’”(110) Hitler’s words caused many of his fervent followers to spread his message throughout the country. In the speech, a Nazi speaker denounced the “disease” of the Jews, the immoral, and the Communists, spreading Hitler’s influence throughout Germany. These powerful words caused the people to support the book burning of Jewish ideas and other ideologies to get rid of anything that opposes Nazi ideology. The example of book burning further shows that these actions were likely initiated by the moving words of the party speakers. However, Hitler’s words are not the only ones that impacted his actions in The Book Thief. In this scene, the Hubermanns warned Liesel about the repercussions of going against the Nazi Party and revealing their secret. Hans tells Liesel,“‘I will take each and every one of your books – and I will burn them.’ It was callous. ‘I’ll throw them in the stove or the fireplace.’ (...) The shock made a hole in her, very neat, very precise. Tears welled” (203). We can extrapolate that Hitler’s words caused the Hubermanns to be extremely careful while housing Max, as his
Throughout the novel Liesel reaches new highs and new lows, overcoming her fears and succumbing to her anger. Liesel's sudden outburst at Ilsa Hermann after Ilsa asking to stop the laundry services caused her to finally accept her brother's death and even helped Ilsa accept her son's death as well. Ilsa's guilt consumed her and caused her to become a house ridden woman overcome by her grief while Liesel overcame her guilt and grief by learning how to read and write not allowing them to overcome her. "“It’s about time,” she [Liesel] informed her, “that you do your own stinking washing anyway. It’s about time you faced the fact that your son is dead. He got killed! He got strangled and cut up more than twenty years ago! Or did he freeze to death? Either way, he’s dead! He’s dead and it’s pathetic that you sit here shivering in your own house to suffer for it. You think you’re the only one?” Immediately. Her brother was next to her. He whispered for her to stop, but he, too, was dead, and not worth listening to. He died in a train. They buried him in the snow. […] “This book,” she went on. She shoved the boy down the steps, making him fall. “I don’t want it.” The words were quieter now, but still just as hot. She threw The Whistler at the woman’s slippered feet, hearing the clack of it as it landed on the cement. “I don’t want your miserable book. ”[…] her brother holding his
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.
I chose this quote because as I mentioned before, it was one that stuck with me throughout the book. Not the direct text of the quote, but what the quote means to me. I understand it as, Liesel does not agree with the Nazi party and how they view and treat Jews, however, to ensure her safety she says a 'hail Hitler'. Actions like these, ones that the Germans do so that they wouldn't angry the Nazi party and ensure they are safe. In the case of the Hubermanns, they are people that do these actions out of an obligation to fulfill their duties as Germans, the leaders of the Nazi party. They are not doing things such as saying, "hail Hitler" to every German they see because they believe in the actions of Hitler, they were doing it to keep themselves and their family safe from the cruel acts of punishment. In the quote and numerous times in the book we can find examples of the hesitation of acting towards the German soldiers, or any other German. With Lisel and the Hubermanns it
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.
Throughout the memoir, Wiesel demonstrates how oppression and dehumanization can affect one’s identity by describing the actions of the Nazis and how it changed the Jewish people’s outlook on life. Wiesel’s identity transformed dramatically throughout the narrative. “How old he had grown the night before! His body was completely twisted, shriveled up into itself. His eyes were petrified, his lips withered, decayed.
I chose this quote because as I said before, it was one that stuck with me throughout the book. Not the direct text of the quote, but what the quote means to me. I see it as, Liesel does not agree with the Nazi party and how they view and treat Jews, however, to ensure her safety she says a 'hail Hitler'. Actions like these, ones that the Germans do so that they don't angry the Nazi party and ensure they are safe. In the case of the Hubbermans, they are people that do these actions out of an obligation to fulfill their duties as Germans, the leaders of the Nazi party. They are not doing things like saying, "hail Hitler" to every German they see because they believe in Hitlers actions, but they were doing it to keep themselves and their family safe from the cruel acts of punishment. In the quote and many times in the book we can see examples of the hesitation of acting towards the German
This is a story of courage, companionship, affection, survival, decease, and sorrow. This is Liesel’s life on Himmel Street, narrated by Death. There are two major themes in this book that are experienced at any point of time in everyone’s life. Those themes are “Survivor’s Guilt” and “Abandonment”. This book should be read by everyone. This book has a lot of themes that is beneficial for people in their lives. I feel that this book is interestingly written for an important piece of history.
The most poignant aspect Night is Weisel 's stream of consciousness throughout the story. Wiesel’s stream of consciousness transforms his view on faith as he witnesses the horrors of the Holocaust. At first he is astonished at the atrocities, but later he begins to believe he is living in a world without God. Upon his arrival at Birkenau, Wiesel cannot believe the horrors he was witnessing before his eyes, “How could it be possible for them to burn people, children,
Liesel’s slow development of the power of words causes her to experience the negative effects of words and misery on many occasions throughout her lifetime.
Within the construction of texts the context and perspective proposed is unavoidably swayed by the way in which events, characters, and ideas are skewed or omitted by the narrator himself. Such a manipulation of ideas comes both within the context of our own experience or culture and the purposeful construction of the writer. Even when confronted with a narrator who is seemingly void of bias and flippant to the scenes of humanity, Zusak constructs a narration which prompts the reader toward empathy for the German people and Death himself. In the authors inspiration, Markus Zusak, born to a German mother and an Austrian Father, was influenced by the stories he collected from his mother and Father's childhood and wartime experiences. Consequently,
“’Is my mother a communist?’ Staring. Straight ahead. ‘They were always asking her things, before I came here.’ … ‘Did the Fuhrer take her away?’ … ‘I knew it.’ The words were thrown at the steps and Liesel could feel the slush of anger stirring hotly in her stomach. ‘I hate the Fuhrer’ she said. ‘I hate him.’” (115)
“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
Zusak demonstrates this through Liesel’s relationship with her mum. Her mom left her to fend for herself with an unknown family because she and her husband were communists that greatly disliked by the Nazis. “A gang of tears trudged from her eyes as she held on and refused to go inside.” This quote shows that Liesel’s has a strong relationship with her mother due to the fact that she doesn’t want to be apart from her. This is important because it contradicts the well-known statement that a mother's love in unconditional. Zusak uses this to challenge a point that most deem a fact. The relationships that are most important are those with our family members as we expect endless love, yet even abject hatred can destroy the strongest of bonds. One must be careful to not let the hate projected upon one to them to create a mutual hate. Zusak shows how dislike is destructive through Max’s obsessive hatred towards his oppressed; the nazis. Max’s relationship with the Nazi’s is filled with anger because of how the way his people were treated and hated by Hitler. “White light lowered itself into a boxing ring … Diagonally across, Adolf Hitler stood in the corner with his entourage” In this excerpt, Max’s true hatred is shown by him visioning a fight between him and Hitler. Zusak displays how the Nazi’s dislike of the Jews leads to Max sharing the same feelings for the Nazi’s. Hatred can start off being one
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.
As time evolves, so do the words that are essential for our everyday survival. The most obvious difference between humans and animals is our ability to master the art of speech. Often, people will say the “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”, a simple nursery rhyme that helps ease a bullied child from abusive words and taunts. But does that really help cure the emotional pain? Words can illuminate and motivate the minds of people but can also shadow their self-esteem through psychological trauma. In The Book Thief, we see how fundamental words were to shape the reality of millions of people caught in the fire of World War II.