Essay On The Book Thief

A few weeks ago, I finally got around to reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. I’ve owned the book for about a year now, and I recently decided it was time to pick it up. The book is narrated by Death, and I knew I wanted to portray his character through a scrapbook. Death is a very multi-dimensional character who defies the stereotypical expectations of Death. The pages of the scrapbook are shown between the pages of Mein Kampf. 1939 in Germany was a time when many books with questionable or controversial content were burned. Hiding the scrapbook inside of Mein Kampf would have protected it. Two of the characters, Liesel and Max, wrote stories on painted over pages of the book. “There were the erased pages of Mein Kampf, gagging, suffocating, under the paint as they turned.” The first page of the scrapbook features a swastika, graves, and a quote from the beginning of the book. The Swastika represents the reign of Hitler and his Nazis. The graves are all the people who died under their oppression. (It is Death’s job to take all the murdered souls and guide them out of their bodies.) Death quickly establishes himself as the narrator of a peculiar

Shown are a snowman, a toy soldier, a pinecone, a deflated soccer ball, and a feather. When Max became deadly ill, Liesel brought him presents every day. Although he was entirely unconscious, she continued to bring him gifts in hopes that he would wake. Liesel had already lost her brother and her real mother, she couldn’t bear to lose her new friend too. Death remarks, “I witnessed the ones that are left behind, crumbled among the jigsaw puzzles of realization, despair, and surprise. They have punctured hearts.” Death pities those he must separate from their loved ones. He finds despair in his job, so he looks to the colors of the sky and the compassion of humans toward each other to brighten his dark