Preview

Examples Of Ugliness In The Book Thief

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
664 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Examples Of Ugliness In The Book Thief
The Book Thief Essay In times of war things can get ugly fast. War wounds, it scars, it kills, it devastates, and it hurts. The Book Thief written by: Markus Zusak is not just a book about those things, but rather a book about a girl named Liesel Meminger, and her life during WWII. But in Liesel's life, Markus Zusak shows us something else but all the ugliness in WWII, instead he shows us the beauty in times of ugliness in Liesel's life. Some examples of this are, when Hans reads to Liesel after she has nightmares, Liesel reading (using the power of words to calm people down in the bomb shelter, when bombs are dropping, and Liesel reading Mein Kampf with Max in the basement. The reason why Hans, reading to Liesel after she has nightmares, is a great example of beauty in ugliness, is because of the fact that it shows how Hans cares for Liesel after she just moved to 33 Himmel st. By reading to her, trying to get to know her, and make her feel comfortable moving into …show more content…
The reason why this is a great example is because Liesel was taught to read by Hans, when she had nightmares, and she is using her knowledge(power of words) To help the people around her, by calming them down. That is the beauty. On the other hand the ugliness is that bombs are dropping on a peaceful town, where innocent people live, and people have to fend for their lives, by going in basements to protect their neighbors and family. All because of WWII. A great example from the text is on part 7 page 382 and it states, “Out of respect, the adults kept everyone quiet, and Liesel finished chapter one of The Whistler.” This quote shows how Liesel has used reading to calm the people in the bomb shelter and because of that people paid their respects to her. This further more shows the beauty in ugliness, in The Book

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    It is 1918, Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old girl living in Germany during World War II. Undergoing many troubles Liesel’s experiences are narrated by Death, who describes both the beauty and destruction of life in this era. Liesel avoids the mayor's house at all costs because she suspects that the mayor's wife saw her steal the book from the bonfire. However, Liesel’s mother is working under the mayor, she has to pick up and deliver laundry everyday. The mayor’s wife has invited her to her library every time Liesel comes to pick up laundry. One day the mayor fires Liesel’s mother and that began the mischief of Liesel and…

    • 109 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Stealing her first book opened Liesel up to a world filled with words and grammar. As she stared at The Grave Digger’s Handbook, “touching the print inside, she had no idea what it was saying.”(38). Because Liesel could not read or write, as a nine-year-old, she was forced to attend school with children who just started learning the alphabet. There was a stolen book hidden under Liesel’s bed and she didn’t know what any of the words said. That inspired her to have “sudden desire to read it that she didn’t even attempt to understand” (66). However, it was also ironic that she asked her foster father to teach her these skills, when he could not comprehend them himself. It all became beneficial for Liesel because his lack of ability “would cause less frustration in coping with the girl’s lack of ability” (65). Because Hans could not read acutely, he understood what she was going through, and he was patient. In a few years, she was able to pick up a book and read…

    • 438 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Book Thief Passage

    • 1717 Words
    • 7 Pages

    This passage was chosen because throughout the entire book the characters are tragically dying, especially at the end after the bombing. We see everyone that Liesel associated herself with die, and this one haunting sentence foreshadows the events. This statement makes it known to readers that death, is basically inevitable and that there will be a great deal of it in the text. The passage contributes to the work as a whole because it focuses in on one of the major themes in this novel, death. It uses death as a unifier, conclusively…

    • 1717 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    This passage makes me feel sad because of the sudden death of Liesel. As a result, this prompts me into realizing that one of theme of this book is about how life is unpredictable. An example of this is when Liesel dies without warning. I can relate to this theme because a friend of mine from elementary has committed suicide and none of her friends knew until her parents posted a post on Facebook declaring that she has died. Therefore, I've learned that cherishing the people around me is important as they might die without warning, like…

    • 98 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    To begin, in the novel the character Liesel helps to develop a theme of courage Firstly, Liesel purposely tripped a man riding his bike so she could steal food he was going to give to fat priests This is displayed in the following quotation, "Of course I do, but I'm not hungry…

    • 359 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Upon Liesel’s arrival to Himmel Street, she has no desire to meet Hans: her new Papa. Hans notices her stolen copy of The Gravedigger's Handbook and offers to teach her how to read and write. From then on, a lively friendship presents itself as “Liesel made her way down to the basement.…

    • 537 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    No one believed she was smart enough to read, and instead of being placed in her age appropriate classes, she was out with the kids at her reading level. For her it was humiliating, but it only gave her the fuel she needed to keep moving forward. Desperate for help, she confronted her uneducated step father Hans for help. Hans himself cannot read that well, but she knows any help is better than none. Hans, referred to as Papa by Liesel, began to teach Liesel basic reading skills every night. They had a tradition, “unofficially…called the midnight class, even though it commenced around two in the morning”. Now Liesel knew how to read. She had an unlimited amount of knowledge available to her through literature. But, she herself could not take down Hitler. That does not mean that she could not fight back though. When the Nazi’s bombed her street, most people stood in the bomb shelter terrified. Yet, Liesel instead took out a book and began to read. Everyone soon began to congregate around her and listen. The fear of what was going on around them subsided, and at the moment they had won. Though Hitler was still attack them, he no longer had control over them, they were not scared. It was at this moment that Liesel realized the true power of literature, and the book she held between her fingers transformed into the sword she would use to fight her way out of Nazi Germany.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Book Thief is an encouraging tale of a fictional girl named Liesel. Liesel was raised during a time of great pain and suffering: Nazi Germany. Many Jews, Gypsies, mentally and physically disabled, and others were killed over a ten year timespan. Scope magazine adapted the book and the movie to create a play. One of the characters, named Death, states, “I’m always finding humans at their best and worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.” True, we’re all human beings but how we picture the world and react to it is a whole different story. The extent of examples that can be found in the novel, movie, play, and even real life Nazi Germany has a very wide range including the mass murders and the “Harriet Tubman”s.…

    • 632 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Liesel realizes how words can be good and evil. She learns that words and reading can bring families and communities together. When she is reading at the shelter, “Young kids [are] soothed by her voice, and everyone else saw visions of the whistler running from the crime scene... they [are] distracted now, by the girl with the book” (Zusak 381-382). When she reads at the shelter during the bomb raid, it gives the audience a sense of comfort and distraction. Because of her reading in the shelter, Frau Holtzapfel stops her grudge with the Hubermanns, and asks Liesel to read for her. Liesel realizes that words also have a good side, where the words have the power to bring people together. Liesel also comprehends that Adolf Hitler uses words to manipulate German citizens to carry out horrific facts, which cause a lot of deaths and suffering. So Liesel decides to create her own novel, so she can spread the good in words. Her last line ends with, “I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right” (Zusak 528). This shows how the power of words has impacted Liesel in good and bad ways. She shows that she wants to use the words for good, rather than evil. The fact that Liesel was illiterate and now she is writing a book to spread awareness is very impressive. In…

    • 1233 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Diction In The Book Thief

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages

    When Liesel saw Rudy “her hands were trembling” and she was “losing control and misjudging” things. Liesel was so shocked after seeing Rudy’s corpse that she started losing control of herself. She couldn’t accept his death, so she lost it and continuously tired to wake him up. Liesel described “Papa” as “a man with silver eyes, not dead ones.” Papa had silver eyes when he was alive so she expected him to have those eyes when she found him, but they disappeared and became dead after he lost his soul. His eyes “were all empty” and they “continued to rust.” After looking at Papa, Liesel said, “Goodbye, Papa, you saved me. You taught me to read.” This major detail expresses Liesel’s feelings towards her father, and it shows how important and influential “words” are to her.…

    • 652 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    She is beginning to grasp the concept of reading and is seeing the effect words can have on people. She sees that words can be weapons. During the 1940’s, Hitler was in power. Hitler used words instead of guns and money to take over. He manipulated and tricked people into believing what he was doing was right. This shows that words can give someone the ability to rule and take charge if used in the right way. On page 262, Liesel is very rude to Frau Hermann. Liesel gets very angry that Isla cancelled her washing and uses words to insult Ilsa Hermann and damage the relationship they had. Later on Liesel apologises to Ilsa, but before she does, she feels terrible about the nasty things she…

    • 532 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Book Thief

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Liesel has a great passion for books and it is first shown when her brother dies and she steals her first book The Gravedigger’s Handbook. The second time Liesel steals a book, she is seen by Ilsa who is one of the clients of Liesel's mother Rosa Hubermann. Liesel faces an argument with Ilsa and this is how she used the power of words: “It’s about time,” she 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…

    • 659 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Liesel's Strangeness

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages

    In Chapter One, Liesel is introduced as a nine-year-old girl soon to be ten, when her younger brother dies and, she is fostered away by her mother to live with the following characters Hans and Rosa Hubermann. The readers learn that Liesel is uneducated, “She hadn’t learned to speak too well or even to read, as she had rarely frequented school.” (Zusak 21 ). Further down in the novel, the readers learn that Liesel deals with anxiety and she is closed-minded due to her horrendous past. Although Liesel suffers from anxiety and being close minded; there is a small part of her that is open to the purity and kindness of Hans Hubermann heart. “Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father’s eyes. They were made of kindness and silver.” ( Zusak…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Liesel’s fascination for reading and ability to articulate literature exposed her to greater issues draped across Germany as well as the emotions and struggles of those surrounding her. From this, she was able to identify the result of her words and their impact, along with the words of others. However even when under dreadful circumstances, The Book Thief was able to bring comfort and ease to those around, distracting many from their worries. The words of Himmel street is what brought inspired Liesel Meminger and platformed her journey with literature as an important…

    • 339 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    When she originally came to her foster family, she only recognized very simple words: “He made [Liesel] point out any words she could read and ... say … , there were only three--the three main German words for ‘the.’ The whole page must have two hundred German words on it,” (67). She was completely committed to learning how to read. Every night Liesel would wake up because of nightmares. Her foster father would read with her and help her learn to read and write each night at around two o’clock in the morning. Liesel also really loved books. Her foster family was very poor, so they couldn’t afford to get Liesel presents for her birthday or Christmas. On Hitler’s birthday, the town decided to do a book burning. A few books survived the fire, so “she snatched [a] book from beneath a steaming heap of ashes” (84). Liesel was willing to risk going to jail (or worse) to read a book. More people should be like Liesel when it comes to her bravery and her willingness to work hard for the things she…

    • 757 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays