Techniques Used In John Steinbeck's 'Book Thief'

1256 Words6 Pages
Caroline Santarelli “Book Thief” Prologue Page Number | Literary Element/Technique Being Used in the Passage | Importance of the literary element/technique | 1 | Tone | When the author writes in the beginning of page one, “You are going to die,” he does this to set the overall tone for the whole story, dark, mysterious, and puzzling. | 9 | Personification | The author gives a crashed plane the characteristics of a bird by saying “Smoke was leaking from both its lungs,” because planes are often compared to birds and he wants to show that this “little metallic bird” can no longer take flight due to its bad crash landing. | 12 | Hyperbole | “They were all glued down,” is an exaggeration, the author says this sentence to show how…show more content…
| 51 | Metaphor | Not referring to the stars in the sky, but to the star of David painted on the houses to signify that Jews lived there, and they all lived on one road, so the children in the book referred to the road as, “The road of the yellow stars.” | 79 | Personification | The author gives the clouds human-like features to set the mood and help the reader picture the sky at the moment, which was dark and filled with big clouds overlapping and passing each other. The author chose to make the sky unsettling and stormy to represent the fight going on with Liesel and Ludwig. | Section2 Page Number | Literary Element/Technique Being Used in the Passage | Importance of the literary element/technique | 92 | Onomatopoeia | The author uses the sound word, “Pat, pat, pat,” to show Liesel imagining her foster mother showing affection even in the smallest way with a pat on the shoulder, something Liesel longed for but knew her hard headed foster mother was not the affectionate type.

More about Techniques Used In John Steinbeck's 'Book Thief'

Open Document