So here I am. A little more than 1/4 way into my "choice" novel. I chose The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, an historical fiction told through the perspective of Death. It centers around a girl named Liesel who is growing up in Nazi Germany. After losing her brother to disease and her mother to the communist cleansing of the current regime, she must move in with Hans and Rosa Hubermann, a married couple whose children have already moved out. Hans quickly becomes a friend and ally in this new situation and forms a close bond with Liesel while teaching her how to read.
Liesel is at first uncomfortable in this atmosphere. As she is not able to read at first, the school places her in a grade below where she should be. Evetually she causes enough trouble in the younger grade for the teachers to bring her up. Along the way she accumulates a certain troupe of characters who walk the line of friends and rivals. One of the more colorful characters is Rudy Steiner, a mischeivious boy who seems to have a crush on our protagonist. One of the most memorable parts Rudy has had in the story is the time he spread charcoal all over himself in order to look more like Jesse Owens and therefore run faster. This taking place in Nazi Germany, Rudy's father did not take too kindly to this interest.
While the cast of the book certainly makes the book more entertaining and engaging, the thing that draws me as a reader into it is the voice. Markus Zusak uses the story telling style of Death to the stories advantage. Verbs are used in most visual and graphic ways. Right from the beginning, color is mentioned as being extremely important to Death as it keeps her sane throughout the aeons of her morbid work. While color is certainly highlighted in the most important descriptions, it seems that Death perceives this world in avery different way that we do and will often use descriptions of sight, smell, sound, and taste interchangeably. She speaks of footprints having a smell, and I'm not quite sure whether she does this on purpose or if that's simply how she knows the world.
4 comments:
I really like this book. The two things that are really interesting is how the story is told from the perspective of death and the voice. Im kind of waiting for more action. I feel like i have read this before yet i haven't. I feel like the whole hide a jew and then the nazis find them and stuff is kind of a more "cliche" but the whole book thief and stuff is a new twist.
I definitely agree with your last paragraph. I love the voice so much! His description of colors is evident throughout the book, and it makes me wonder how Zusak views death. Does he view it as a black hole of nothingness, therefore grasping onto the color of life to gain hope? Or perhaps he sees it as something so colorful and magnificently less-flawed than the world we live in, that we should embrace it, rather than fear it. I'm not exactly sure quite yet what message he's trying to get across by using death as a narrator, but I'm quite interested to see where this book goes from here.
I loved this book when I read it a while ago!! I completely agree with the voice of Death making it book unique and capturing. Plus, it's not your average Holocost book told by a Jewish sufferer or a Nazi, it brings a whole different view to it. But my question, based off your post was why did you call death "She?" Did the author say that death was a female and i just forgot that or is that how you just picture Death? Because I always pictured Death as a male just by the way Death spoke and thought about things. I was just curious.
yes sir, this book is absolutely delightful. Now that we have all finished it and have finished our book talk projects, I am kind of sad. The story was so interesting, especially death's voice, that I didn't want it to end. Death is a very interesting being. He appeared more human in the book than I would have expected. His obsession with color was also an interesting theme.
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