The Role Of Love In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief

In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the reader is brought back in time to Nazi Germany and the family that lives in 33 Himmel Street. Using the interactions between the characters Zusak exhibits how love can bring pain and grief, but ultimately healing and peace. Living in Germany during World War II was a time strife with heartbreak and pain. In opposition to the pain was the healing and peace that was brought forth by the love of the characters family and friends.

In the novel, Zusak illustrates how love can bring pain and guilt. Despite it allowing him to live, Max Vandenburg feels guilt over leaving his family to go into hiding, “It tortured him. If only he’d turned for one last look at his family as he left the apartment. Perhaps then

the guilt would not have been so heavy”(Zusak 193). While Max is in hiding, he knows his family is potentially being taken to a concentration camp or are dead, leading to him to feel extraordinary pain. He also feels a sense of relief when Walter guides him away further adding to his pain and guilt; he is feeling relieved while his family is being persecuted. In addition to causing pain for leaving, guilt can also cause pain for being the one who stayed. Michael Holtzapfel survived the war while his brother Robert perished, resulting in his lack of sleep and of him “seeing visions of his brothers severed legs” (503-504). His relief and happiness for surviving induces feelings of pain in the form of survivor’s guilt. He does not believe that he has the right to feel happy to be alive while his brother is dead. Liesel, similarly, feels the pain of losing her brother, not for being alive while he is not, but for witnessing his death and having to live every day without him. Her pain manifests in the form of nightmares and when she wakes, she would see “on the other side of the room, the bed that was meant for her brother floating boatlike in the darkness” (36). At eleven Liesel is at the age to understand death and its consequences, she knows her brother will never come back, illustrating how a person's love can bring exceptional pain. Her love for her brother and his subsequent death in front of her, have haunted Liesel in her sleeping hours. Leaving or losing loved ones affects people in all stages of life and at all ages. Few are immune to the pain that losing a loved one brings.
While love can cause pain, it can also have the opposite effect and bring healing. Liesel came to 33 Himmel Street as a broken girl. Nightmares plagued her sleep, focusing on the dead eyes of her brother, but with the help of her papa, Liesel is able to overcome her sorrow “The girl knew from the outset that Hans Hubermann would always appear midstream, and he would not leave (..) Not Leaving: an act of trust and love” (37). Liesel knowing that Hans will continually be there for her, helps her to move forward from her grief. His stable presence allows her to heal. Similarly Liesel delivering the plate to Ilsa Hermann, in an act to mend their relationship, enables her to finally end her grieving period over her sibling. Once Liesel left the plate and rectified their relationship, she knew that “(...) her brother [would] never climb into her sleep again” (473). Throughout the book, Liesel’s brother has made appearances when she is acting out in aggression; however, after her apology Werner is finally put to rest. Her act of compassion to Ilsa showed Werner that he was no longer needed to keep Liesel on a righteous path and both were allowed to heal. As a result of Hans and Liesel’s actions, Liesel was free to relinquish her pain and commence her healing.
Pain and healing.

Two very opposite emotions that can come from a common source; love. The centre of many emotions, one of which is peace. The peace that comes from a long life surrounded by loved ones or a death that will reunite a person with them. The first of which is Hans Hubermann, who has a soul that that very few have. One that is content with the life that they have lived, enough to greet death when he arrives where his soul can move on “to other places” (532). When death takes Hans from the house, his soul whispers one name; Liesel, yet Hans allows death to take him anyway. This illustrates how Hans knows that one day he will be reunited with Liesel and is patient enough to wait for her time. While Hans Hubermann is waiting for his loved ones Frau Holtzapfel is ready to join hers. After the passing of both of her sons, she was a broken woman awaiting death. When he came for her “her face seemed to ask just what in the hell had taken so long” (530). Frau Holtzapfel’s love for her two children was so strong that she believed her life was no longer worth living. Her peace would come when she was in the beyond with her children. Unlike Frau Holtzapfel, Liesel did not wish for death, but she did greet it the same way as her papa. Liesel’s life was long after the war but full of love and “in her final visions, she saw her three children, her grandchildren, her husband, and the long list of lives that merged with hers. Among them, lit like lanterns, were Hans and Rosa

Hubermann, her brother, and the boy whose hair was the colour of lemons forever” (544). Liesel died an old woman with a soul ready to depart from this world. Zusak shows the reader Liesel’s peace from her love of her family and friend in her final visions. TRANS many lives intersect in an individual's lifetime. Some cause pain and grief, others healing and recovering, but a few affect people on a more spiritual level. Their love brings with it a sense of peace from a life fully fulfilled.
Zusak illustrates in many different ways how love can bring a spectrum of emotions; from pain and grief, to healing and peace, using the characters interactions.

Throughout the book he follows the war and what happens in its wake. Not only the expected pain, but surprisingly the healing and the peace that arise from a time riddled with agony. In conclusion, Hitler’s regime destroyed thousands of lives, from the Jews in concentration camps, to soldiers on the battlefield and finally the average german citizen, but one thing he was never able to do was erase their capability to

love.