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Sebastian Mejia Mrs. Porter English 2 Pre-AP/GT – 5th Period 17 September 2015 Part 1 English 2 Pre-AP/GT Summer Reading Assessment – The Book Thief by Markus Zusak 5. Hans gains Liesel’s trust through patience and understanding. Whenever she would cry or wake up from a nightmare, he would be there for her and protect her. He would say “Shhh, I’m here, it’s alright” to console her and let her know that he won’t leave her. (Zusak 36)
What does it mean to take a risk? What are we willing to risk? Many people will take risks in their lives, but what were all willing to put on the line will vary widely. This is the case for many characters in Markus Zusak’s 2005 novel The Book Thief.
The Word Shaker, the story he writes for Liesel. In it, he suggests that words are the most powerful force there is, indicated by the fact that Hitler uses words and not guns or money or to gain control over
Abuse of Power From the beginning of time until now, civilization has always felt the need to be organized under a leader. The craving of power lives in most people. Sometimes men striving for power can work their way up to a dictatorship, absolute control, by using propaganda, fear, and many other methods. In the novel, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Napoleon portrays similar qualities in power as Hitler.
The society of both novel, “1984” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” shares familiar methods in order to maintain higher power to control lower class citizens. Their absolute goal to gain complete dominance is through removing or destroying a piece of humanity in order for disobedience or rebellion to be impossible. Gilead and Ingsoc constantly condition citizens by monitoring and invading their privacy. Both regimes employed similarly styles of monitoring, such as spies organisations or simply through the surveillance camera.
Just as Hillary Jordan’ main protagonist Hannah has been put into boxes her whole life, literature tends to think in boxes as well. Novels are put in different genre boxes and the characters are, through their character traits, in boxes as well. This thesis has three boxes as well, in this case called chapters. Within each chapter it will be tried to break these boxes open and discuss why not everything can be put in just one box and why society should start to think outside the box.
ntroduction Paragraph: The title of this book is The Book Thief, written by Markus Zusak, and this book is The extraordinary New York Times #1 Bestseller. The genre of the book is historical novel and the narrator is the Death, which describes not only all the main characters’ thoughts and emotions but also his own thoughts and feelings about the humans. Summary: The story takes place in the German town of Molching, a suburb of Munich during the World War II, from1939 to 1943. The story is about the book thief, Liesel Meminger, a German girl in age of 9, who was sent to her foster family, Rosa and Hans by her real mother due to some difficulties.
Throughout history, women have often been subjected to prejudice and an inferior status to men. Due to sexist ideologies of men believing that women are not capable of controlling their own lives, women have often been reduced to the status of property. This concept is prominent in many pieces of literature to demonstrate the struggles women have to go through in a predominantly, male structured world. In the novel, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood, the author illustrates a woman’s battle in an extreme society ruled by men to express the misogyny occurring in the time period when it was written, 1894. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia summarizes Atwood’s story as one that “depicts one woman’s chilling struggle to survive in a society ruled by misogynistic fascism, by which women are reduced to the condition of property.”
Power can have the persuasive action in undoing the moral ethics of one’s character. This can be seen throughout history, such as World War II and proven by the actions of Napoleon in the allegory, Animal Farm, by George Orwell. As Lord Acton said “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” In history what was viewed as a villain, is never the same as the perception. A leader does not begin wanting to do wrong, they start with the best intentions, but power is a tricky thing.
Power can be a wonderful thing, which leads to success. On the other hand, misusing it can lead to corruption, depending on who is handling it. George Orwell in his book Animal Farm uses animals to show that humans abuse their power. The most significant topic in the novel is the abuse of power that keeps happening again and again. When unconstructive human qualities take over what is really important and overcome one's ability to govern competently, power is corrupted.
Margaret Atwood has seamlessly woven a tapestry of feminist elements - mainly regarding gender oppression - within her works. With that, using two of Atwood’s texts, The Handmaid’s Tale and The Year of The Flood, as the foundation for our literary research, we will be focusing on the commodification of the female flesh in both similar dystopian contexts. Commodification refers to the action or process of treating an object, or a person, as a raw material or product that can be bought and sold, or even treated as an object of which sovereignty can be held over by one. In both works, women are victimized and treated as sexual beings whose bodies and physical expressions can be freely used by the men who have power over them against their will. The two texts illustrate how society brings about the oppression of women and this exacerbates the commodification of women.
In this written text, the emphasis will be on Margaret Atwood’s novel, The Handmaid’s Tale and as well as the way Atwood portrays women and how it can be argued to show the oppression of women. The main purpose is to analyze the way women are treated throughout this book and depict why they are represented this way in the society in Gilead. Then, comparatively, observe the men’s domination over women and how they govern this society. In The Handmaid’s Tale, women are stripped of their rights, suffer many inequalities and are objectified, controlled by men and only valued for their reproductive qualities. The Gilead society is divided in multiple social group.
“Power doesn’t corrupt people, people corrupt power.”- William Gaddis. People take advantage of power when it is entrusted to them because of their own greed, which as a result lead to societal deterioration. In the story, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” by Margaret Atwood, the higher-ups from Gilead abuse the power that is given to them, ruining the life of the citizens in the society. This was the cause for the need of higher birth rates and fixing conflicts in the world, but this was handled immorally.
Imagine a nation in which its government commands by a religion where women are separated into different titles and must conceive children for their commander. Their rights from before this regime, and anything deemed unholy by the government, are a thing of the past. This situation is the one represent in the Republic of Gilead, where the rules of society and its traditions are not taken lightly if broken. In the novel The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood shows that an oppressive government leads to the inevitable neglect and remiss of the rules through Offred’s characterization, irony, and flashbacks. Offred 's character development can show that her actions change .
The Book Thief revolves around Hans and Rosa Hubermann, Rudy Steiner, Max Vandenburg, and the infamous ten-year-old book thief, Liesel Meminger. The setting is Himmel Street, Germany during World War II and the narrator is Death, who busily runs to and fro taking souls and stumbles upon the Book Thief’s very own handwritten book. Though Death might not be the narrator someone would think fit to be point of view for the book, he manages to catch and describe the beauty and destruction of war whilst telling the stories of the people living on Himmel Street. Along with Markus Zusak’s captivating writing, he will tell an unforgettable story set during the Holocaust from the views of a Jew on the run and four Germans while a war wages on. Whereas other authors would prefer writing from the victim’s perspective during the war, Markus Zusak gives insight on the Germans that had no choice but to grudgingly obey throughout Hitler’s rule.
