"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak

People who are ignorant are the easiest aim when you want to manipulate the others. Like the famous “451 Fahrenheit” by Ray Bradbury suggests, when you are afraid of being deprived of you power – start burning the books. The people who know nothing about anything will gladly believe all your lies. This novel is about reading which helps you to get more mature. About living in the time and place that makes you choose between your consciousness and safety. About children who can be much stronger and true to themselves than adults. About one man that wanted to rule the world and many others who believed his stories. About death that is kind and life that is cruel. About the healing and destructive power of words.

The outside

Let’s look at the outer form of this novel first. The peculiarities start with the narrator itself, for the story is told from the point of view of… Death. Strangely enough this severe judge, as we are used to think of him, turns out to be not deprived of human feelings. In fact, the abstract mythical creature is presented as rather anthropogenic in this book. He is touched by beauty and colourfulness of the world that people are usually too busy to notice. He does his best not to get attached to any living beings, but can’t deny that some people out there fascinate and inspire him and sometimes his curiosity takes over and he starts following one or another wanting to know more about them. One of such people turns out to be Liesel, the little book thief. We will return to her later.

The narrator, which is easy to guess, is omniscient here, he not only observes and comments the actions of the characters, but also penetrates into their minds. Time is quite a vague concept for such an everlasting creature, that’s why he also does a lot of foreshadowing, but don’t be discouraged, this won’t spoil you the pleasure of waiting for the next turn of the plot, in fact it rather inflames the reader’s curiosity. In addition the language of Markus Zusak and his manner of describing events are so vivid and sensual that every event which involves Liesel and people surrounding her appeals to the reader’s emotional side. So when the best or the worst, already predicted by the narrator, comes at last, the reader suddenly finds himself completely unprepared for that and feels as though he/she never knew what would happen.

As you can clearly figure out from the title, the novel discusses reading and writing, as well as the influence of those processes on one’s life. So it’s quite logical that the genre of this book can be defined as metaprose. You will find not only the insight into literary process, both from reader’s and author’s side, but also a lot of intertextual connections to other types of writings, both imaginary and real. The author fits into his text a lot of quotes, not only from fiction, but also from dictionaries and even a handbook for morticians! They serve for many different purposes – foreshadowing, expressing the character’s feelings, metaphorically hinting at the events that happen before or after, and surely not the least of them is making the text truly unique.

I have already mentioned the colours and I must say that they also play an important role in the “The Book Thief”. Throughout the book the author uses the technique of synesthesia, mixing up colours with tastes, sounds and character’s feelings. Whether the personages are happy or lonely, delighted or horrified, excited or suffering, the colours keep surrounding them helping the reader to get into the corresponding mood as well. The narrator’s eye catches the colours and their subtones unmistakably and is always astonished at the variety of them in human world. This shows us that maybe our planet is not the worst place to leave after all, for even an everlasting creature after so many years of service hasn’t got wearied of it.

The inside

So what is the novel actually about? It’s 1930s and the reader finds him/herself in Germany where Hitler quickly paves his way up to power. 8-year old Liesel gets adopted by the Hubermanns and starts her new life in one of the poorest streets of Munich ironically named Himmelstrasse (Heaven Street). She slowly gets to know her neighbours, including her best-friend-to-be Rudi Steiner and learns to read by the book she stole on her way to the new family (her first, but not the last theft). As the events escalate and drive closer to the WWII, Liesel will have to make a lot of new acquaintances and a lot of difficult choices.

The novel discusses Hitler’s regime in Germany and focuses on “small” people who carry on with their everyday lives and have different views and thoughts on what is happening around them. Some are truly inspired by the Führer’s ideas and are eager to follow him, others prefer to stay in the mainstream and join his party like everyone else, to avoid possible troubles rather than to share some political ideas, some see the cruelty of his rhetoric but are too weak and frightened to confront it openly, others speak out their disagreement. Whatever the characters do, the author tries to communicate us, that there was only one Hitler but millions of other people and not every German was really a Nazi.

Anyway, in “The Book Thief” Adolf is only a distant ominous figure somewhere on the horizon, the novel doesn’t show us the battles, it describes the everyday surviving of people who were left behind. It shows the hunger, absence of work and money, the air raids and a lot of deaths, it shows how people deal with loss and learn to continue their lives even under those circumstances.

One of the important topics connected with all the mentioned above is the Holocaust. Exhausted and despaired Jews are force into a devilish parade across the town once in a while and the neighbourhood watches them, each one having some dark thoughts he doesn’t share with others. Liesel watches them too and doesn’t even realize that soon enough she will get acquainted with one of them closer that she ever imagined – the Hubermanns will hide a Jewish man in their cellar.

From this point we come to the next and one of the central ideas of “The Book Thief” – the relativeness of morality. Unlike the laws of society or nature, morality is a very subjective concept. How do you decide what is moral and what is not? The answer would depend on your age, gender, nationality and race, religion, background, experience and the personal qualities you have formed during your lifetime. It also could depend on a million of other things and situations. With a chain of event and characters in this novel Zusak illustrates this statement and leads the reader to the thought that one should be very careful when accusing someone of immorality.

Liesel steals the books trying to satisfy her hunger of knowledge. Is this a bad deed? Perhaps. But for a great cause. And if we compare this to the famous Hitler’s book burning, which would be more immoral – to steal in search of knowledge or to deprive people of it?

According to Nazi ideology it is highly immoral to help a Jew as those people are unworthy and minor. This means you should think of Hans Huberman, who tries to save the life of a Jewish boy hiding him in his house or gives a piece of bread to an older man who can barely walk from hunger and exhaustion, as a highly immoral person.

Fighting for your country is brave and noble, but what if I told you that half of the soldiers were taken away and put into the hell of war against their will and many didn’t even agree with the ideals they were fighting for?

It is quite natural to mourn your dead son but what if in you mourning you forgot you had another one who also needs your love and support?

The author urges the reader to think over and compare all those situations to make your own conclusions about them, or rather to reach the understanding of the fact that we all aren’t saints and sometimes it’s much more important to be tolerant and forgiving towards others than to possess highest moral qualities yourself.

Although those topics sound rather dark, it’s not the whole book, not at all, and I wouldn’t even define the general atmosphere as depressive. On the contrary, even growing in such times children find their ways to have fun, to dream and be inspired. Even the adults have their little pleasures once in a while. Liesel reads to her neighbours in the cellar during the air raids, which brings a lot of relieve to those tensed and tired people, Rudi dreams of becoming a famous sportsman, Hans Huberman plays the accordion and Liesel escapes into her stolen stories.

From the viewpoint of our narrator life and death come as a natural cycle, where one doesn’t exist without the other. Of all the people most of all he likes those which enjoy their life fully when they are still leaving and calmly accept him when it’s time to finish. This, alongside with Death’s commentary and the general course of events, gives this novel a certain air of fatality and hints that there is a predisposed path for each of us and we have to follow it, whether we want it or not, whether it is a pleasant walk or a rather dangerous and hard journey.

And, of course, there are books. Although Liesel doesn’t possess a lot of them, from the very moment when she learns how to put letters into words and words into sentence, life changes for her forever. Books will become her friends, her refuge and her consolation. They will walk with her through all the happy and sad moment and support her wherever she goes. The central topic of this novel is the power of words. While Liesel learns to use this power for good, there is always another side. Hitler also was familiar with this power, all his speeches were brilliant examples of elocution and rhetoric art, but unfortunately he used them for all but noble reasons. With his speeches he bore hatred and anger in society, he made people believe his lies and follow his destructive dreams. Inside the novel there are some embedded narratives, one of which is a fable about a girl and a word-tree, that metaphorically describes how different words can bring life or death.

In general, I would say that the book although promoted as a read for teens discusses some very deep ideas which for younger people might be not fully decipherable. As for me, I guess it’s better to read it at least twice – in your teen years and a little bit later in your life - so that with each new read you could discover new layers and little nooks you have missed while reading for the first time.