Markus Zusak’s coming-of-age, historical fiction novel, The Book Thief, tells the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster child brought to live with a family in Molching, Germany during World War II. Throughout the novel, Liesel meets many characters who show tremendous courage in the face of the circumstances they are forced to endure like Hans, Rudy, and Max. However, the courage that they exhibit is not always the kind where they run out into battle with guns blazing but something else. Hans Hubermann, Liesel’s foster father, is at first glance, an unceasingly kind, yet ordinary, man. Even Death says so when we first meet him: To most people, Hans Hubermann was barely visible. An un-special person...Somehow, though, and I’m sure you’ve met people like this, he was able to appear as merely part of the background, even if he was standing front of a line. He was always just there. Not noticeable. Not important or …show more content…
“In the basement of 33 Himmel Street, Max Vandenburg could feel the fists of the entire nation. One by one they climbed into the ring and beat him down. (254)”. Max’s courage is the kind that shows through everything he does, even in the smallest of ways. He gets up each morning and keeps on going despite struggling with the survivor’s guilt of leaving his family. He fights the nazis by painting over the pages of Hitler’s Mein Kampf and writing his own stories over Hitler’s words. Lastly, Max has the selfless courage to not come back to 33 Himmel Street even after Hans said that he could because he did not want to endanger their family any more than he already had. No matter what challenges he faces, Max makes the ultimate decision whether to let the things that happened to him affect him or to instead persevere through any means that he can, even if it does not seem to amount to much in the grand scheme of