Book Thief

The book thief is about a girl named Liesel Meminger who had a brother and
a mother who could not afford to take care of the two of them. The three were on
their way to a home kept by Hans and Rosa Hubermann when the boy, Liesels
brother, suddenly dies. He is buried in a nearby town when the train stops. One of
the gravediggers leaves behind a handbook called the Gravediggers Handbook,
and Liesel takes it with her. They then depart to Himmel Street, the setting of the
novel. Liesel is not happy with her foster parents at first, but eventually grows to
love them. As she grows, she meets a boy named Rudy, who ends up being her best
friend. When she first attends school, she is placed in a classroom with much
younger children because she cannot read. Meanwhile, at home, after discovering
that Liesel had hidden the Gravediggers Handbook, Hans decides he will teach her
how to read, as much as she knows. He found out when Liesel was having one of
her usual nightmares about her brothers death and she wet her bed. As Hans was
replacing the sheets, he found the book tucked into the bed underneath it. Rudy at
one point, trying to be Jesse Owens, covers himself in charcoal and starts running
one day when his father takes him and explains some concepts very hard for a child
to understand. The midnight lessons go on as her father teaches her how to read.
Hans brings a newspaper under his shirt one day and finds that World War II has
started. One day in school, when she is ridiculed about her ability to read, Liesel
starts fighting a boy and is punished for it.
I think the story is good enough to keep me reading, but I also think its
missing something. It seems like the fact that Death was the narrator disappeared
for a while. He did not make any remarks or criticize the humans for a while, and
seems like an ordinary third person narrator. I thought Death would be playing a

slightly more active role through the book. Death also made it clear that although
she may not show it, Rosa does love Liesel. I think this is interesting because Rosa is
the least understandable character in the book; but, then again, maybe it was
supposed to be that way. One more point: the gravediggers handbook is not a book
worth keeping. What makes it worth keeping is preserving the memory of Liesels
family. Death is, in a way, humanizing himself when using fragments and
interruptions to explain things. He keeps his descriptions of people realistic, but he
also brings out the best in people. I think during a few chapters, he stepped out as
the narrator because he did not make his usual remarks about the humans or how
they act to certain things. He stopped conveying his own opinions and started to
just tell a story. After a while, you realize he isnt there anymore.
I think there is a lot to take away from the book thief, but focusing around the
main idea of the book Liesel learns to do something that she never thought she
could: read. Liesel came from a rough past, and that is the reason she gets into so
many of the situations she does. She is taunted at school because she cant read
and she cant read because she could not learn to in the conditions she grew up in.
In real life, there are many children that face adversity and, because of that, face
situations that others dont have to.
All children, at one point or another, have been told a story, whether it was
by a parent, an aunt or uncle, or a friend. But what do these stories entitle? The
premise of the Novel Fahrenheit 451 is that in a society where books are burned on
sight, a book can only be preserved by the memorization of its entirety. That book
showed me how important stories are, and when printed on a page, the stories
become unchangeable. I think the stories we are told during our childhood play a
huge part in molding us into the people we turn in to. Its hard for a child to grasp a

concept so cruel, especially after being brainwashed from childhood. Through

childhood, we slowly lose this sense of innocence we are all born with. We are told
something as harmless as the fact that Santa isnt real then told something as
harmful as the fact that there are people in the world suffering for no reason and
slowly, ripped from us the most valuable trait to childhood, our sense of innocence
disappears. For kids like Rudy, it was a lot worst; being told the fact that suffering is
one thing, but kids like Rudy were taught to enjoy it.