Death Figurative Language

People tend to have this fear, discomfort, and at times even hatred towards the darkness of death. We have always portrayed death as a grim reaper, with the long black cape covering his bony, thin, skeleton body, holding a scythe on his right scraggy hand. In today’s society, and even in history, people have never given death a positive reputation unless it has to do with evil intentions. For the first time in literature, death is given a voice, a chance for us to hear what he has to say about humans and what he really goes through. Markus Zusak was capable of giving death the characteristics of a human and give it a different point of view. Death as a narrator captivates the story of this little girl named Liesel by using his unique techniques of point of view, foreshadowing, and figurative language. As he describes, “ It’s a small story really, about, among
other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist fighter, and quite a lot of thievery.” In the beginning of the novel people may believe that the narrator might be a character in the story such as Liesel.
The reason for this is that we are not used to hearing a non-characteristic things having a voice. .“It kills me sometimes, how people die.”, says death. Believe it or not he doesn’t like seeing people die. He sees them at their best and at their worst. Sometimes he believes that they aren’t ready to die, and they still have so much to live for. Others are lucky enough that he gets called for duty, but for whatever reason they escape from him. In death’s point of view he doesn’t really get attached to people, but in some occasions he does and in this one he is intrigued with Liesel. The advantage of having death as the narrator instead of Liesel is that death can predict what will happen next. He can see the future and coming up events that a twelve year old, German girl is not able to see. If Liesel was the one telling the story so many events and detail around her would be missing because through her eyes she see the world in one way; from someone above her can see the whole world around
her. Death is on duty during World War II, work has never been as busy as before the war. In some of these job scenes he comes across the book thief a few times. These few times that he came across her might have been the most important parts of the book. In the beginning he talks about the snowing sky, the smoking plane, and the boiling red sky. At first we have no idea why he is so fascinated with these events, but we all will understand throughout the book. Without the clues given in the beginning of the book would make the reader feel like they don’t understand why things are happening. For example it’s like if a crime scene never had any clues. It would have ended in the spot before the investigation even started because they don’t have any clues to solve the problem. The importance of death telling the story is that he foreshadows throughout the whole story making interruptions and giving out hints.