Germany during World War II. The Book Thief is a story about love, hope and the power of words. It’s also a story about some of the few people in Nazi Germany who still believed in human equality. The young Liesel Meminger has lost her family. At the burial of her brother, she finds The Gravedigger’s Handbook in the snow.
In the book thief, Liesel meminger is riding on a train to her adoption parents with her mother and brother, when her brother dies of unknown causes. While at a small makeshift funeral, Liesel takes the gravediggers handbook, and keeps it. She is adopted by Hans and rosa hubermann, Hans is a nice man but his wife rosa is angry personality, but is good hearted and nice on the inside. In a while she meets her neighbor and soon to be best friend, and lover. Liesel also developed a relationship with the mayors wife, which had its ups and downs, and is also were most of Liesels reading and book thievery was based.
This is emphasized in some aspects of the novel which include, Han’s characterisation, the friendship Max and Liesel share in a time of suffering and deaths narration. Narrated by death, The Book Thief is a story of Liesel Meminger, a German girl growing up in Nazi Germany. Given up by her communist mother, she is sent to the home of Rosa and Hans Hubermann in the town of Molching shortly before World War II. Hans is a gentle, kind man, who in midst this time of injustice is brave enough to give bread to an old Jewish man in public as well as helping Max Vanderburg hide from the Nazis. The incident of the bread shows parallels to what Zusak’s mother witnessed and told him about in her stories.
“Words from the basement: Markus Zusak's The Book Thief.” Notes on Contemporary Literature: From Literature Resource Center. 41.1 (Jan. 2011). This writer talks about the importance of the different roles that the Hubermann’s cellar/ basement plays in the novel. The basement is a refuge and a sanctuary for Liesel (with her books and words) as well as for Max (a Jew in hiding). The writer of this article talks about how the basement isn’t just a hiding place for a Jew or a refuge to learn but it is a place to rebel against authority when Max transforms it into a setting for creative/political activity by painting over Hitler’s Mein Kampf erasing Hitler’s authority and becoming his own authority.
Words can have a large effect on many things, they can affect what people do, they can change how people feel, words are extremely powerful . The book that I decided to read for my ISU is called “The Book Thief” it was written by Markus Zusak. Here is some background knowledge on the book Thief, the book thief took place before and during WWII. The main character throughout the story is a little girl named Liesel, she is an orphan and an only child as her younger brother dies at the beginning of the book. Later on in the book a jewish man named max shows up at their doorstep looking for somewhere to stay because he was told that he would be able to get help here.
Summary of the book This book follows the neglect and abuse of Katie and is told in story format for parts of the book. Hughes gives a commentary at the end of each chapter on his thoughts of the issues of how each stage of abuse affects not only Katie’s development but also how it was affecting her mother Sally as well. After Katie is placed into foster care the story details the two different sides that Katie shows her foster parents. She goes from being a happy child when things go her way into an aggressive and mean child who wants to get even by destroying other peoples possessions. Katie’s caseworker struggles to find a foster home for her and to find the right therapist to help her with her lack of attachment to anyone.
Avery Sirmans Mrs. Graham 1st Block April 11, 2013 Literary analysis paper: The Book Thief Stupidity is not courage. The Book Thief, a novel by Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger is a small girl in Nazi Germany. Liesel is sent into foster care, and finds comfort in the words of books she steals. In a drastic Turn of events, she ends up hiding a Jew, in her basement, who becomes her friend. In Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief, Liesel Meminger shows that stupidity can easily be mistaken for courage.
"White Oleander," by Janet Fitch is a book that viciously grabs my mind and emotions and plays with both my intellectual and emotional comfort. It is a heartbreaking story of a young, twelve year old girl, who is taken away from her mother whom she is deeply attached to and placed in a series of abusive and harsh foster homes. This is because her mother is sent to a life-sentence in prison for first-degree murder of her boyfriend. Having grown up in a loving, caring household, I cannot imagine having to endure the suffering the main character, Astrid, did. Throughout her foster homes, she was forced into child labor, starved, and even shot at with a gun by one of her foster mothers.
The main character, Meg, found a diary of a dead classmate in her coat pocket and on one of the first pages, she reads “and their doom comes swiftly” (McNeil, 139). Another example is “Does he know how I feel? How much it hurts” (McNeil, 210). About a chapter before Meg and T.J. read that diary entry, their friend Nathan was found hanging from a door with an arrow in his chest going straight through his heart. 2.
In the Book thief, this idea is very important and is portrayed to the reader through a range of different techniques. The setting of Nazi Germany is crucial in helping the reader understand the power of words, while the main character Liesel shows us how words can be used positively as well as negatively. Also the different books Liesel acquires through her childhood help us understand the different ways words and literature can be used to affect humans. In