Scarcity, Opportunity Cost, Choice in ‘The Book Thief’
Jordahnn Eckensviller
Macroeconomics - ECON 1007
November 7th
N. Brown
The novel ‘The Book Thief’ is about a young girls experience in Nazi Germany during Adolf Hitler’s reign. The novel is narrated by Death as he collects the lives of people surrounding Liesel Meminger – beginning with her younger brother, and ending the novel with death taking Liesel’s life many years after the war. During the novel it subtly describes different economic theories. The most descried being scarcity, opportunity cost, and choice.
Firstly, scarcity is shown most dramatically when Rudy and Liesel find a coin on the ground; they rush to bring it to a candy shop hoping to get mixed candy – only to discover that the coin is only worth one small piece of candy(page 155, ‘The Book Thief’, Zusak). In order to understand how this characterises scarcity you should understand what the economy is like at the point of reference. To sum it up quickly, almost everyone is hurting financially – and those who aren’t, are the seemingly the only funds to support any economic foundations. In the Hubermann residence for example, Hans works as a painter however there aren’t many people wanting signs painted, Rosa does peoples laundry and ironing, and with the combined incomes they need to support …show more content…
Even though they knew they were already short on food and finances for just the three of them, Hans and Rosa decided to pay off the debt that Hans promised during The Great War. By choosing to help Max it put them at risk for many different things, primarily being that; they could have been found out by the Nazi Police leading to probable extreme punishment or, they could have all starved because there was a lack of food to
Jordahnn Eckensviller
Macroeconomics - ECON 1007
November 7th
N. Brown
The novel ‘The Book Thief’ is about a young girls experience in Nazi Germany during Adolf Hitler’s reign. The novel is narrated by Death as he collects the lives of people surrounding Liesel Meminger – beginning with her younger brother, and ending the novel with death taking Liesel’s life many years after the war. During the novel it subtly describes different economic theories. The most descried being scarcity, opportunity cost, and choice.
Firstly, scarcity is shown most dramatically when Rudy and Liesel find a coin on the ground; they rush to bring it to a candy shop hoping to get mixed candy – only to discover that the coin is only worth one small piece of candy(page 155, ‘The Book Thief’, Zusak). In order to understand how this characterises scarcity you should understand what the economy is like at the point of reference. To sum it up quickly, almost everyone is hurting financially – and those who aren’t, are the seemingly the only funds to support any economic foundations. In the Hubermann residence for example, Hans works as a painter however there aren’t many people wanting signs painted, Rosa does peoples laundry and ironing, and with the combined incomes they need to support …show more content…
Even though they knew they were already short on food and finances for just the three of them, Hans and Rosa decided to pay off the debt that Hans promised during The Great War. By choosing to help Max it put them at risk for many different things, primarily being that; they could have been found out by the Nazi Police leading to probable extreme punishment or, they could have all starved because there was a lack of food to