The Book Thief: Character Analysis

The characters in a story. They are hard to bring to life, yet a story would be incomplete without them. I love to write, and I often don’t have troubles creating my characters. But what makes every character stand out is that special thing about each and every one of them. That’s one thing that I loved about “The Book Thief,” by Markus Zusak. Each and every one of the characters in “The Book Thief” were different in personality and I made different memories with each and every one of them. The one character that I spent a good deal of time with was Rosa Hubermann, Liesel Meminger’s foster mother. Out of all the character, Rosa was the one that I was most frustrated with. Even with all those moments I laughed at, I was still frustrated with Rosa’s actions and behaviours. To begin, Rosa has a very aggressive personality. She was narrated by Death as “the woman with the iron fist” (Zusak, 36). She also treated Liesel poorly, yelling at her, making her clean the spit at the doorway and setting strict rules for Liesel. Some could call that discipline, but I think Rosa could have done that in a friendlier manner. Rosa

Her voice was surprisingly calm and caring.” (Zusak, 96) “She possessed the unique ability to aggravate at almost anyone she met. But she did love Liesel Meminger.” (Zusak, 35) These excerpts from the book show that Rosa (called Mama by Liesel) does really care for Liesel, as she was showing her soft side. But even nice people can get frustrated at times, but Rosa seemed to have more anger in her than care. A good example of this would be, “What was that, Saumensch?” (Zusak, 70) This term appears a lot in the book since “Saumensch” is what Rosa likes to call Liesel. This term was what bugged me the most since “Saumensch” is not a nice thing to call someone, as it is an insult to a woman. The male translation would be “Saukerl.” Death, the narrator, explains to us that “sau” means