This chapter gives the reader the feeling of helplessness, and desperateness. Mark Zusak does this begins the telling
This chapter gives the reader the feeling of helplessness, and desperateness. Mark Zusak does this begins the telling
In stark contrast to the omnipresent hatred and terror of Nazi, Germany, Zusak’s characters repeatedly demonstrate love through gestures of kindness and empathy. One such example takes place during an air raid, after a plane crash-lands near…
The narrator in this chapter tries to convey the theme of guilt, shame and fear. The theme…
The novel All the Light We Cannot See, by Anthony Doerr, is an intricately written story about two young adults during World War II. The two main characters Werner and Marie-Laure come from extremely different lives. Marie-Laure is a blind 16 year old girl who lives in a nice house in France with her dad. Werner is an orphan who lives with Jutta, his sister, who is the only person in his family he knows of. This book tells the story of how these characters that come from seemingly unrelated worlds cross paths in the most unexpected way. These characters are brought together by an item that plays a crucial role in this story; the radio. The radio is an item that plays a major role in Werners life. Although it may seem like just another piece…
Death pauses the Liesel’s story to help alleviate the stress of his job and how humans haunt him. He describes them as “heaps, all mounted on top of each other.” And while this sounds haunting, the reader imagines his job to be painless in comparison to what the Jews are going through; simply collect souls and send them on their way. However, like us, Death is human too. He connects to the human’s story, finds beauty in their lives, and becomes too interested in them.…
The presence of death reveals itself to the book thief within both celebration and mourning as her life of words cycles on. In a state of partial sleep, Liesel “could see without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead… [for] his blue eyes stared at the floor seeing nothing” as Death tenderly “knelt down and extracted his soul” (20-21). The book thief’s primary encounter with Death would always stay with her as she watches her sickly but beloved brother depart from this world in a train carriage. Liesel senses Death’s presence as she gazes at the dying pilot and the two “recognized each other at that exact moment” from the scene of “a train and a coughing boy [as Death] slowly extracted the pilot’s soul from his ruffled uniform and rescued him from the broken plane” (400-401). An intimate sharing of identity occurs as Liesel faces the sight of death’s mark on humanity alongside Rudy and recognizes a sense of solemn passing in this occurrence. This passionate adolescent witnesses death at its climax as she sees “the bodies of Mama and Papa both lying tangled in the gravel bedsheet of Himmel…
“Living in Two Worlds” by Marcus Mabry is a short story in which he writes about the discomfort he experiences traveling between the two worlds of poverty at home and richness at Stanford. Mabry goes to school with a full scholarship and lives a pretty decent life while his family live in poverty in New Jersey. Some of the things that the author compares are geographical differences between the two world, social differences, and his guilt feeling toward his family. The author writes about geographical differences between New Jersey and Stanford.…
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…
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.…
In reading “Ragnarok The Day The Gods Die” by Randall Kenan it talks about God, marital affairs, jealousy, and resentfulness. The preacher in this story Barden is jealous of the relationship that his wife Sarah has with God. The question that is raised in my mind is it because he has fallen by the wayside of his belief in God, by having an affair with someone within his flock? Had the affair begun once Sarah at age thirty-three started having women problems? Sarah couldn’t no longer give Barden any children other than the one son that they already had, before the problems started with her reproductively. Many would think as they read this story that Barden was very resentful against Sarah. Back then in those days women were looked at as broken if they couldn’t give their husbands what they wanted. Which many of the men then wanted a number of children. With further reading I asked myself a multiple of times did Barden marry Sarah for all of the wrong reasons? Because in the story says “He sees her cooler, now resigned, now more a saint than a woman, less a wife than a helpmeet.” So was the only thing that Sarah was good for was cooking, cleaning, and raising their son Carl.…
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.…
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…
In The Book Thief, by Marcus Zusak, the narrator, Death, tells the life story of a young girl named Liesel Meminger during World War II. He explains the events and challenges Liesel experiences due to Hitler’s words and influence. In this passage, the author uses diction, imagery, and details to help the reader imagine and have a deeper understanding of the events taking place and the character’s thoughts and feelings.…
The endings of the sections and chapters of the book pull the reader in and make the story that much more believable. On page 15 he writes "An open tomb. / A hot summer sun." after he describes their houses as they leave the ghetto. "I was fifteen years old." comes after he watches a son kill his father for a scrape of bread and then be murdered himself on page 96. On page 32 Wiesel swears never to forget what happened, ever. "Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.…
Most of the American history serves a great deal of pride, acknowledgement, and importance to its culture. Spreading democracy and liberty all over the world yet forgetting some part of the history full of abusement, racisms, and evil. The novel, Between The World And Me, written by Ta-Nehisi Coates, who is know for expressing black culture by writing novels, talks about some of this history. In his novel, he confesses all the fears filled in black Americans’ body in a letter that he writes to his fifteen year old son. When I first learned about the history of African Americans, I was shocked and I wanted to know even more about their culture and their backgrounds since, my culture is different from theirs. I was also disguised because American history was so cruel. One of the reasons that I took this class was also to learn more about African American culture. Ta-Nehisi Coates is also African American which helps the novel show his personal feelings and opinions…
Liesel has lost and suffered so much in life. She was raised without a father, and later given to a foster home. Being raised by a single mother, their family was very poor and didn’t get a lot of food. Sadly, on the train ride to the foster family the two kids would live in, Werner, her brother, passed away. Leisel could see “without question that her younger brother, Werner, was now sideways and dead. His blue eyes stared at the floor. Seeing nothing,” (20).…