“I am haunted by humans” -Death. Death is the shadowed figure cloaked in black, gaunt fingers curled calmly around a silver scythe, feeding on darkness and murder. Feeding on war. But what if Death hated war? If he only wore a cloak when it was cold, if Death had a heart? Markus Zusak’s, The Book Thief, proposes exactly that. Narrated by an eerily human and vulnerable Death, Zuzak questions everything depicted about this ender of life. While engrossed in the life of a young Communist girl in Nazi Germany, who Death dubbs “the book thief,” Death grown his own opinion on his nature and the nature of the humans he travels amongst. More than any other fictional figure, I relate to Death from Markus Zusak’s novel, The Book Thief.
Death has little …show more content…
He expresses this in the passage, “I’m always seeing people at their best and their worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.” I understand his feeling. In my books and in the news, I am touched by stories of people who choose love over everything else: the mother who allows a building be bombed to save her child, the dragon who leaves her family and species to be with a human, the girl who refuses to destroy her country to save the world from total war. However, this “beauty” and strength of spirit is also a severely selfish act that hurts far more than it helps. It is often enigmatic to distinguish what is the correct course of action. Lyndon Baines Johnson, during the Vietnam War, described his analogous dilemma by speaking about his title. “A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.” This is most certainly the truth for Death as he experiences World War 2, and often the case for me when mentally debating ethics of purposeful genetic mutation and manipulation, engaging in war, or contrasting government systems. Any and every option is complicated and has the potential for catastrophic results. There are dystopian societies based on extreme altruism, such as the one described in Anthem, by Ayn Rand; there are, on the other end of the spectrum, dystopian societies based on selfishness. I have read books
Death has little …show more content…
He expresses this in the passage, “I’m always seeing people at their best and their worst. I see their ugly and their beauty, and I wonder how the same thing can be both.” I understand his feeling. In my books and in the news, I am touched by stories of people who choose love over everything else: the mother who allows a building be bombed to save her child, the dragon who leaves her family and species to be with a human, the girl who refuses to destroy her country to save the world from total war. However, this “beauty” and strength of spirit is also a severely selfish act that hurts far more than it helps. It is often enigmatic to distinguish what is the correct course of action. Lyndon Baines Johnson, during the Vietnam War, described his analogous dilemma by speaking about his title. “A President's hardest task is not to do what is right, but to know what is right.” This is most certainly the truth for Death as he experiences World War 2, and often the case for me when mentally debating ethics of purposeful genetic mutation and manipulation, engaging in war, or contrasting government systems. Any and every option is complicated and has the potential for catastrophic results. There are dystopian societies based on extreme altruism, such as the one described in Anthem, by Ayn Rand; there are, on the other end of the spectrum, dystopian societies based on selfishness. I have read books