The Book Thief Stealing Essay

The act of theft is predominantly considered worldwide to be one of the most corrupt acts one can commit, it is even written in the Bible as the eighth commandment that one “shall not steal”. So it is particularly interesting when the act of theft is not used in a narrative not to show how iniquitous the villain is but rather to make a point about the protagonist of the story. Such is the case for Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief. In the book thief Zusak uses the motif of thievery to as an act of empowerment for Liesel. It is representative of how Lisel is trying to take control back of her life in a time where she feels she has lost all control of the world around her. The act of stealing books is also significant as this can represent her taking knowledge back from her oppressors who wish to destroy it. The act of stealing is never in the novel portrayed as a crime of any sort, rather the act of theft flourishes into an act of liberation for Liesel.
Liesel's act of stealing doesn’t begin as completely deliberate, initially she just steals what she can find. The first theft that Lisel commits in the novel is stealing a book that a gravedigger dops in the snow. This book later becomes important as this is the
Liesel and Rudy on a personal level take control back of their lives which had completely evaded them, and on a symbolic level take power away from the Germans by stealing books and taking the knowledge held within them. The acts are never shown as villainous or evil but rather as a way to emancipate themselves from the cage they felt that had been locked in. Zusak masterfully uses a act as simple as theft to display and carry the themes of the entire novel. It makes us think in times where we feel that all is out of our control what we ourselves can do to take power