The Role Of Death In The Book Thief By Markus Zusak

Improved Essays
In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the unseen influence, the great architect who constructs the ending of being; is an intriguing character to explore as it brings a distinct aspect to the story. In this case, the voice of Death acts as an overseer of the lives he witnesses, the novelist masking the human misery suffered during the Holocaust. Death shows his fascination with humans and the color of the world, but how he struggles throughout the book to understand how humans are capable of so much beauty and yet, so beset on the destruction of themselves. Death finds appeal in Liesel and her story, and believes that liesel’s life is one of the great beautiful stories he holds. Throughout The Book Thief, Death often gives us an entertaining,

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Beautiful Ugliness Often, one does not think about what death sees. Usually the common thought is what someone sees when they face death. Their last hours, minutes and seconds. There is never really a thought of what Death sees and experiences on his way to take someones soul, especially if he is always around the same people or person and is constantly taking people out of their life.…

    • 1721 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Practice Free Response Question #10 The novel Night, written by Elie Wiesel, offers a look into the depths of the horrors of the Holocaust from the perspective of someone who experienced it all. The images that were conjured up into my mind as I read were so powerful, yet disturbing all at the same time. Every word kept me infatuated with Elie’s story, even until the very end. The last two lines of the novel, “From the depths of the mirror, a corpse was contemplating me.…

    • 185 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Book Thief is narrated by Death himself. Throughout his narration, Death is found to be extremely literal and true to all his thoughts and the emotions that someone like Death would never appear to have. Death is always around us, even though he may be able to avoidable at certain times in people’s lives. Death is a very proper narrator considering the setting of the book, World War 2. People say that Death and war are like best friends, therefore it would only make sense if he was the one to narrate the novel.…

    • 459 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    An individual is powerless against the larger power of society, ultimately it is something they will succumb to and face. In The Book Thief the story follows Liesel and her life in Nazi Germany as she encounters several victims and abusers of power. The poem The next war is a soldiers poem during describing his experience with death and fatality. Finally in an interview The Sins of the Father is both an interview that gives us insight into the psyche and trauma of Martin Burnham. Power demonstrative in the texts through a series of techniques that reflect the victims and users of power.…

    • 1186 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Death seems to find Liesel both compelling and admirable. She is generally kind and tolerant, but she has also shown intolerance. Ilsa Hermann fires Liesel’s mother and in return Liesel treats her completely unfairly because she is angry. The point of view of the narrator shows how even the most tolerant characters can be cruel or…

    • 1025 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Death, the inevitable mystery of this world, leaves the sense of fear in many. Whether it be physical or emotional, death plagues this world. It is a realization that one must accept and not live in distress from. Elie Wiesel, an American Jewish writer, was one of many who experienced some aspect of emotional death during his time in the Holocaust. While being exposed to terrible conditions causing malnutrition and this sense of death Elie was able to overcome the hardest challenge of the time, survival.…

    • 221 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Book Thief the reader is left with the knowledge that despite the bitter and harrowing realities of war Liesel was able to then go and lead an accomplished life. She in her time as a child, achieved the ability to read and write, after propagating that desire she has gone on to be an author one who lived a well off existence after the war. To the viewer, Liesel’s experiences shows how something as tragic as a war can have a positive outcome. Through the use of Death as the third person, Spielberg pointed out the futility of human nature; that we would have the ability to extend immeasurable amounts of kindness but also brutality on ourselves. Empire of the Sun, on the contrary, paints a picture to viewers that the agonizing tribulations of the war has a negative bearing on Jamie’s later life.…

    • 1266 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    MLA El’Noam Afe-Aidelojie Mrs Kronby ENG3U1-04 Better off Alone Abandonment is sometimes the only option people have. It is not so much physical but also a feeling in some ways. Though it may seem difficult in the short-term, it is all for a good cause in the long-term. In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Liesel and many other characters have been, or felt abandoned during the tragic time of war and the Holocaust.…

    • 1389 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” (Wiesel 109). This quote was from the end of the book and shows trauma, sadness and loss of hope.…

    • 1857 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The ordeals a person go through could change his or her life in either a positive or a negative way. The life Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor, changed as he encounter the horror of Holocaust and the terror it brought. His memoir, Night, shows how he represented the Jews both in physical and mental form throughout their stay in the concentration camp. Firstly, the change overtime in Elie’s attitude towards God represented more than half of the Jews during the Holocaust.…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    “In the concentration camps, we discovered this whole universe where everyone had his place. The killer came to kill, and the victims came to die” (Elie Wiesel). This alternate universe is nothing but one of destruction: the death of the soul. When one is constantly being beaten down, one no longer desires to live. In Elie Wiesel’s Night, the Jewish people lose their desire to live as a consequence of enduring extreme dehumanization at the hands of the Nazis.…

    • 1375 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In The Book Thief, the themes of survivor’s guilt, love, and the power of words express the kindness and cruelty of humanity. These themes demonstrate how different experiences, dismal and joyous, come together to shape who a person is. At the beginning of the novel, Liesel was a scared little girl with no hope in the human race. After experiencing guilt, love and the power of words, Liesel discovers light in a world filled with…

    • 1070 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    A Guy Who makes Monsters When most people think of Stephen King they think horror. Though he has written many short stories and novel based on horror, he writes many different genera’s except romance. Based on his biographical information it will help readers understand why this is. In Kings’ western themed story “A Death” Jim Trusdale is arrested for the murder of a young girl and for stealing her silver birthday dollar. This story takes place in Black Hills, Dakota.…

    • 1112 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In 1933 one of the world’s greatest battles began: the Holocaust, thus providing Mark Zusak the perfect setting for his novel The Book Thief where every character faces a battle of their own. The narrator, Death, recounts his experience during the Holocaust by focusing on a particular…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    WWII can be seen through many eyes and The Book Thief tells its story through the eyes of Death (Zusak 3). Death tells a story of a German young girl named Liesel and her experience of growing up through WWII (Zusak 5) In the book, the reader sees the importance of reading through the stages of Liesel’s childhood. To her, the books she steals are not just words on pages. They remind her of a turning point in her youth. The importance of reading in Liesel’s life can be reflected in the reader’s life.…

    • 701 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays