Book Reviews and Analysis

The Book Thief.

 

By Marcus husak (sydney) Narrator is death

 

Dealutomoeolate:

 

'Here is a small fact You are going to die' such a prosaic aphorism to optimically ex north on foreshadows 1 sets the tone-for the whole book Death appears quite a quixotically upbeat 1 paradoxically confidant-like, cavalier

 

Apostrophe to all those in' dental 7 At odds with an ordinarily formidable characterisation of death (comic in. its stark juxtaposition) instead he'wwi stand over you as genially as possible. Motif of colours I

 

Synaesthaltia → 'the sound of hee smell of my footsteps'

 

Allo much of his process surrounds colour synesthesia

 

circumlocutory? emitter of f- any pragmatic Beside the railway line'.

 

• • •

 

Interjections of little aphorisms / side notes 1 tag notes to self or didactic atria for readers.

 

4 'I am not malicious. I am i result' significance of colour theory

 

white-curiosity? frost-stricken?

 

Black-

 

Death anthropomorphism things indiscriminately as though humans + objects are synonymous- interchangeable. It personifies + animates things as though they to. were mortal. i they lane was still coughing, smoke leaking from both 4T turnoff

 

Follows me story of the Book Thief-an attendant 1 witness to some of the dead whose souls we must reap. She is an unaware companion?

 

• First the boy at the train tracks

•  

• pilot at the plane crash

 

Red-the last tmi he saw her Bombs creating a' sachet of souls' (neatly Wrapped for win m' a pile)

 

Red, white. + black flue 3 colours he saw when seeing her ui person) create the Nazi flag. these colours near the backdrop of her existence. They are the wallpaper + the flag

 

• • •

 

Christening eaen gravesite of those she has lost Point one:

 

THE GRAVEDIGGERS HANDBOOK:

 

He reverts to the origin of her story 1 the stout was snow.

 

✓ Different chronological perspectives yet irrelevant (wartime) is sufficient as he flits back t forth in. her life.

 

• A short bout of coughing on the train + her younger brother was dead ✓ 'when it came down to it, one of them called the shots. The other did what he was told. The question is, what if the other is a lot more than one?'

•  

• Consistently interrupts his own narration with pithy and profound statements. Perhaps he is an allusion to the Nazis and Hitler and ones fealty 1 submission to the other.

•  

• Death has a lonely (noticeably) existence without the possibility of reciprocated action.

•  

• The first book she appears to steal is the black one in the s n' w At her brothers funeral ✓ She is relocated to a foster family, residents of

 

• • •

 

'Heaven' street.

 

i. The first boon she stole was the gravediggers

 

handbook-it represents the last time. she saw her 5am men saving? mother + brother Her father was a communist ⑥ he had non-Aryan brown eyes Salt = pig's -so sommensch a

 

castigates, berates humiliates a female 5 Whirl is the male equivalent Arson won = arsehole

 

Hans Huberman had cheated death in WWI + would go on to do it again in' WW2 Not-leaving establishes trust m children she had to join' Hitler Youth- 'united German Girls' Lived next door to her 'partner t sometimes catalyst in' crime' -may sturier

 

The Jesse owens incites t (wi solidarity / ridicule or ignorance?) he painted himself black + ran the 1' Om. The bond of friendship 1 camaraderie Vulnerability of the heroine is masked by her dogged stubbornobstinacy

 

• • •

 

• He wins building to people nine way Death describes their destruction wounded in war analogous to soldiers that once inhabited them- cannot 1 on a different plane to humanity-superfluous to differentiate.

•  

• The road of yellow stars I was in felted sores on the injured German terrain) -seen as foreign contaminants -alien t not German - highlighted as Jewish houses + stigmatised

•  

• appropriately as then I deemed by Hitler

•  

• 'adopting the appropriate cruelty than childhood seems to require' unhindered by adult restraint or policy (politeness) uncensored.

•  

• Jesse Owens-I 936 (Hitters Games-1 the Olympics) -won his 4th gold medal but deemed subhuman + unworthy of a handshake from Hitler

•  

• He as a child appears to have done#it out of awe-and misplace 1 attempt to vini tate mimic his note model 'the Black Magic one' ✓ hike. I'm sure many before win Rudy's dad felt no particularly hatred for my are not the few f but succumbed to propaganda and collusion through 1 am' up. outing in the Nazi party-he was complacent c- therefore Uup able

 

• • •

 

'but we-many around him-his disquietude discomfiture bubbled below the surface- suppress able- 'there was an non ui his heart but he made a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaning out' If he gave in to that inkling he might have to acknowledge some uncomfortable truth 1- maybe be compelled to a potentially fatal action.

 

• Rudy is told brat he cant paint himself black-not for the offensiveness but because it w#would make him look like one of the oppressed groups + might risk his being taken away.

•  

• childrens altitude is very pragmatic naturally open minded-1 Unclouded by prejudice

•  

• 'safe blue eyes'

•  

• Dutiful but not excamati.ve/rehemest/ rigorously supportive

•  

• 51 All I 933-90% of Germans showed unflinching support of Hitler Hans twulnerman was i member of the minority

•  

• with age + knowledge -does here a come a greater breadth capacity for emotional mining- 'her hunger to read that book was as intense as any 10 year old human would experience- -Is our peak of emotion

 

• • •

 

flexibly expandable?

 

• 'the smell of their armpit-such unusually mondiniensional experiences are given sensual G) assignations-they make each experience multifaceted, richer, deeper.

•  

• 'risk leads to more risk, wife to more life + death to more death

•  

• Interesting trying to gunge Death's opinion the Nazis-in' favour, against, ambivalent or indifferent, detained as a non-entity. No political stance

•  

• Hans Junior is his father's antithesis-wholeheartedly mounting the ethnic + minority cleansing as 'clean angI out me garbage'

•  

• calling his father a coward for maintaining his morality in the face of such omnionesest complicit submission is ironic

•  

• The Germans become one unified body of wordless assent-caught up with the furor t wy of promise.

•  

• The importance t recognised anarchic potential of words-hence their widespread burning to werent divergent thought

•  

• 'You didnt see people. 'my uniforms + signs'

 

• • •

 

• Personifies words as well-shows how much precedent 1 power is given them- 'a single word leaned against the girl'

•  

• tense if foreboding due to Deaths' omniscient narration-contrary to character's happiness he subverts it with a sense of foreboding

•  

• 'The mayors wife. had seen her alright she was just waiting for the right moment.

•  

• The paragraph, sentence format is very fragmented sometimes with one word unis for emphasis of ominous future events.

•  

• Euphoria at witnessing her first library

•  

• Death utilises. rhetoric-almost a conspiratorial tone with readers

•  

• Death encourages readers (breaking the fourth wall with Khe ethers to ui bold) not to avert their eyes through the harrowing parts- that is to be complicit-Wilsonian knowledge.

•  

• Any derogatory statements conforming with pejorative Nazi mindset are sit repeated with a kind of authorial sardenicism as though undermining such thought.

 

• • •

 

• maintained a facade of compliance for the Sake of survival but did not, as many others did, contribute to the suffering of the Jews t in fact actively helped them.

•  

• Max vanderburg-Jewish fist-fighter Not aueptu.mg of dying submissively, intently

•  

• Irony that Max's saviour wraps his tickets of liberation in Mein Kampf-and the irony of that Hooks translation 'my struggle

•  

• Ironically death, believes in fate t luck regarding cheating 1 escaping death

•  

• 'They think they are running at her young men. they are not. They are running at me' 1 Death describing the futility of war'

•  

• AN TEXT -Nuremberg hours 35

•  

• He had to churn a 10 year old's spirit just to create enough few so she would understand their situation. children were made to mature faster t childhoods were obliterated

•  

• conditioned 1 socialised to believe, even in' the home of any c the basement was the only place for mini - 'affiliation of guilt'

•  

• 'The price of timing' (perhaps at the expense W ahead of others] 'is shame

 

• • •

 

• Quite prosaic 1 offensive / blunt 1 coarse narration-ambivalence shown outwardly but underlying deprecation. towards the horrors of the Now

•  

• Most heartfelt, oauistahwiggwft.me stand our man with the hair whitemen 'they breathed'

•  

• 'German + Jewish wings?

•  

• clear warning of Rudy's premature + undeserved death.

•  

• 'taking a boy uni Ruay was robbery'

•  

• Beautifully written work -8110 'Symbolic / no etc that he faintly gets the kiss he has been asking for but hollowing knowing it was only wi death.

•  

• Even death has a heart'

•  

• www.y companionship-kindred spirit from 12 sides of the track' to speak " 'I will be quite willing to turn a blind eye to any unconscionable tactics you might employ to grind this piece of Jewish stench + film into the canvas'

•  

• Riddled with metaphors of the war + the futility of fighting as well as the barrage against Jews

 

• • •

 

• Every victory for the Jews is manipulated by Hitler into creating a greater stigma-weapon i sing them-aggregating men threat level.

•  

• The uni age, blamed across propaganda, synonymous with. syne idee che to the man himself is his moustache so to have it bloodied is profound.

•  

• Words can cause just as much damage

•  

• Max Vander burg's writings + illustrations are striking + profound minimum

•  

• Hitler is the 'conductor'

•  

• Reminds me of the kite Runner in its needles prutalisation' of a certain community + even Rudy's bully figure is a paralleled trope

•  

• Death's image is deflected in all of us perhaps it is our mirror

•  

• Death offhandedly spoils the book at every turn-quashing mystery + tension but feeding / cultivating a tone of grief t forlornness throughout

•  

• she attempts use the words of literature to nurse Max back to health.

•  

• The plague that is intrusive thoughts driven by grief, hunger + desperation. t the

 

• • •

 

the only beaus of dinging to sanity to differentiate these errant intruders from our own thoughts t conscience.

 

• Ominous reminders of Rudy's death t deaths in-coming

•  

• 'It was only the children I carried in my arms' -he seems to have a special reserved empathy for children-detached from the culpability of adults they appear the only truly virulent t so he treats their souls with greater tenderness.

•  

• 'Her whole death was an ahead of her' & inverted, epigrammatic 1 paradoxical inverted idiom ↳ , adapted idiom to show its hollow equation of the original + the stain nothingness) antithesis of life-1 death.

•  

• Graphic, horrific description of gas chambers

•  

• uses the same Christian reverence when referring to and with capitalisation of His Charms ironic for some reason that Death believes in 1 God despite the fact that Deaton harbours the souls hot and with is the

•  

• 7M cant see death but humans can palpably smell it

 

• • •

 

• interesting-no assignation of gender as death is an androgynous 1 genderless entity-gender is applied to humans, mortals

•  

• Hitler 'ruled the world with words. -without his skills of oratory it is doubtful such damage would have 1N owes my

 

owned

 

• 'forests of words had risen throughout Germany ↳ it was a nation of farmed thoughts' ↳ conveyor belt ↳ my mortised

•  

• lies as driver to learn to read is founded in knowledge that without her own words-she is powerless to fall under the sorcery charm of other peoples words- beating

•  

• Death has a heartbeat which is paradoxical as surely death cannot do e- an essence of mortality- A nod to the human

•  

• Michael 'killed himself for wanting to live

•  

• Theres a frankness when he echoes Hitler propagated slander-but that frankness is not synonymous with assent or approval-in fact, the prosaic 1- sardonically derisive tone suggests the opposite SEARCH authors connection to Germany

 

• • •

 

• 'ribcage of the planet-indistinguishable but also for him-inconsequential-if it has a soul that he can take away-that is of uni pet.

•  

• Died in Sydney