Vaccinated Book Reflection

My initial impulse when confronted with the prompt to select a piece of work that influenced your view of the world was to think of the book that inspired my career choices. Vaccinated by Paul Offit is about a man by the name of Maurice Hilleman who invented many of today's widely used vaccines and saved millions of lives with his vaccinations. It was not only Hilleman's work, but the way in which he preformed his work – testing on himself and allowing others to present his work if it meant his vaccines would be more readily accepted – that inspired me to investigate more into the world of virology. This book changed the course of my life and helped me to find my passion. Despite all of that, the more I considered what I would write, the more
I realized that this book did not answer the question. It is certainly the most important book to me personally, but my view of the world was not changed. I had no revelation about society, nor did it cause me to stop and think about the state of humanity. However, there was a book that accomplished just that: The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. The Book Thief takes place in Nazi Germany and follows the story of a girl by the name of Liesel who was given up by her mother and sent to live with a couple in a small town.
The story is told from the point of view of Death. I would not say that this book was one of my favorites, I can list quite a few more that I would value above The Book Thief, but when thinking about what book changed my views the most, this book was persistent. Throughout the book, we see Liesel through the eyes of Death, how he encountered her because of the dead around her. The very premise of the book was startling, but it was the various observations made throughout the book that stayed with me long after I was done
reading. The part of the book that most affected me was a quote that read: “The consequence of this is that 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.”. I remember putting the book down for a few minutes and thinking about it. I thought about how people could not really be classified into boxes of 'good' and 'evil', no matter how simple it would make things. I still think about it today, that no matter what you see of a person, you never truly know who they are, not entirely. It made me rethink a lot of opinions I held, mostly about others, but to a certain extent myself as well. I realized that one action would not make me 'good'. It's a tipping scale and I have always tried to make sure I have more weight on the side of good. The second quote that always comes back to me when I think about this book is “I have to say that although it broke my heart, I was, and still am, glad I was there.”. That was another moment in which I put down the book and had to stop and think to myself. It made me think about how events, though they may hurt us, end up shaping us as people. It made me really realize that if I had not gone through some of the things in my life that I have, I would not be the person I am today. There is no telling what would be different, what effect not experiencing certain things would have, but I might not have the drive to help people that I do or the insatiable appetite for knowledge that I value so highly. It made me think back and appreciate everything I have lived through, so I could be who I am now. The third thing in the book that had an impact on my was not a precise quote. It's the story itself, or at least a facet of it. During the course of the book, Liesel is learning to read. The title comes from when she steals a book from a book burning. During the book, Liesel comes the the realization that words – Hitler's propaganda – were the cause of so much of the misery she saw around her. She questions whether words were worth their trouble, if the good they could cause out weighed the bad. This section of the story made me consider the power of words; written and spoken. It made me think about how words have to be chosen carefully, not thrown around with no heed to the consequences. I could say that many books changed the way I view the world.
In truth, I could say everything does. Every exposure a person has changes them. I'm never the same person I was the day before. Every piece of media I consume, every experience I have refines my thinking. I gain perspective, understanding, or knowledge from everything I consume. It is rare, however, that one book changes a person as much as The Book Thief changed me, made me reconsider and analyze a lot about my life and others. It helped me to appreciate a lot of things and previously I had not, and that is only the conscience effect that it had. I am always grateful to find something that challenges me, something I can learn something from; whether it be about myself or the world as a
whole.