The Book Thief Argumentative Essay

Argumentative Essay: The Book Thief

Sitting with her foster father, Liesel dives into books. No one knows when the Nazis will come and inspect. The sounds of bombing planes drive overhead as Liesel silently reads her book. The purpose of this historical fiction book is to build a storyline with history with the help of the reader and their emotion. The Book Thief is a great example of a book that checks off all of the purposes of the genre.

To begin with, this book shows social changes. When Rudy explains a road of yellow stars, he is educating the reader on how many people died during this time and how the Jewish people were kicked out of homes. This explains that back then, Jews in Germany weren’t appreciated. Today, the reader knows that people in Germany don’t just kick Jews out of their homes. In fact, Jews aren’t treated as badly as they were back then. As another example of social change, books were burned as a sacrifice to Hitler. Nowadays, people wouldn’t burn books every day for a leader’s sake.

Furthermore, this book allows the reader to make connections between then and now.

For example, Liesel always used to steal tons of apples from an orchard because she was hungry. Now, there are barely any apples left. The orchard hasn’t produced enough apples for Liesel to steal. This shows that over time, change in Germany has changed the production of crops. This makes it harder for the people who are hungry. Others may believe that this is a good thing. They might think that poor people who are stealing shouldn’t be stealing. Even though stealing is bad, if people don’t have food, they will die. This shows the importance of growing an apple orchard for those who need the

food.

On the whole, this book educates the reader of the past. When some kids were playing on the street, there were bombs being dropped. Concrete and earth were everywhere. They were all doomed. This evidence shows that the Nazis dropped bombs on some innocent kids even when they didn’t do anything. This informs the reader of how the Nazis had to follow Hitler’s orders to kill and have no mercy. Some may state that the Nazis really had no mercy and really wanted to kill many children. Although some Nazis were mean, most of them just followed Hitler’s orders so they wouldn’t get killed as well.

The purpose of historical fiction is to build a story using history and the reader’s emotions. When Liesel feels an emotion, that emotion rubs off on the reader, driving them down further into the book. Emotions travel from the book to the reader: “Two hours till goodbye: ‘Don’t go, Papa. Please.’ Her spoon-holding hand is shaking. ‘First we lost Max. I can’t lose you now, too.’”