The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The book just made me weep.  For the senseless destruction, torture of human lives during Hitler’s reign.  The Jews, the ordinary, the poor non Jews.  What made it specially poignant was that the story is narrated by Death.  The personification of Death leaves no suspense, no doubt about the outcome of the novel.   It was a story about Death, a story narrated by Death about events on Himmel Street.  Himmel means Heaven and it is anything but.

It is hard to give an objective analysis of a book which you “feel” more than you read.  It was a beautiful, sensitive story of a young girl (Liesel Meminger) who saw power in words.  Reading was her life--she stole books so that she could live.  Her first book was “The Grave Digger’s Handbook (A Twelve-Step Guide to Grave-digging Success)” published by the Bayern Cemetery Association. A grave digger accidentally drops this book in the dirt when she is at her six year-old brother’s funeral.  She does not know how to read yet, but this book  keeps the memory of her brother alive--that is when she saw her brother last.  Her mother leaves her in the care of Hans and Rosa Hubermann  in a small town outside of Munich and disappears forever.  Her new Papa never leaves her side, and in the nights when she is haunted by nightmares he holds her, plays the accordion for her but most of all, teaches her how to read. In the days to come, the Nazi Party is gets more and more powerful, more and more demanding. Words of hate are sown.  But Molching town is a victim of it just as the Jews were.  Families had lost their children to the war. They had lost their livelihoods.  The young kids were almost always hungry while farmers were feeding Nazis and their propaganda.  Hans (Papa) is a kind man, stands up to the German soldiers, feeds the parade of Jews morsels of bread, hides a Jew (Max) in his home.  He is so full of love for humanity--but he is just very very poor.  His wife washes people’s clothes and we see under the Nazi regime people getting poorer and poorer.  Small businesses have to shut down.  Nobody works but Death.   
Death is a presence. Death is compassionate, affected by all the killings and the bombings.  It complains that it is overworked.  Death kneels at the bodies of children and the aged and the innocent.  If it weren’t for Death as a character in the book, this is just another book on the holocaust.  Death gives us hints constantly.  Periodically, in bold lettering, like a PowerPoint, it gives us a brief character analysis;

THE CONTRADICTORY POLITICS 

OF ALEX STEINER 

Point One: He was a member of the Nazi Party, but he did not hate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter. 

Point Two: Secretly, though, he couldn’t help feeling a percentage of relief (or worse—gladness!) when Jewish shop owners were put out of business— propaganda informed him that it was only a matter of time before a plague of Jewish tailors showed up and stole his customers. 

Point Three: But did that mean they should be driven out completely?

 Point Four: His family. Surely, he had to do whatever he could to support them. If that meant being in the party, it meant being in the party. 

Point Five: Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out. (page 59)

or a peek into the future--In the year 1940, Death says, "Flash forward to the basement, September 1943".  Usually, the forecast not a rosy one--it’s Death, after all.  “The trouble is, who could ever replace me?” (pg 5)  That’s Death’s burden. It is constantly hauling bodies  What was the takeaway from this book? In Death’s words, “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.  Still, they have one thing I envy.  Humans, if nothing else, have the good sense to die”.  (page 491)
Long book.  Lot of time to weep for death of innocence.  In one of Max Vandenburg's nightmares, he has a fistfight with Hitler and his men but he seems powerless against them. "In the basement of 33 Himmel Street (Hans' house), Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of an entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down."(page 254) In such moments he dreams of Liesel giving him succor. He talks of his dreams with her-- opens her palms, gives her the words and closes them again. The legacy of "The Word Shaker" that he leaves behind, inspires Liesel to write her own book which Death finds in the rubble after the bombing of Himmel Street. It holds on to it till it comes to fetch Liesel many many years later.
I don’t know why young adults should be exposed to so much grief. Very readable book but emotionally draining.

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Read more »