“ She would wake up swimming in her bed, screaming, and drowning in the flood of sheets. Indeed, she has terrible recurring nightmares about her dead brother: This tragic event also haunts her for a long time. This tragic event is what pushes her to steal her first book: A Twelve-Step Guide to Grave-Digging Success, even though, at the time, she doesn’t know how to read. When the reader first meets her, in the train that leads her to Hans and Rosa Hubermann’s place in the suburb of Munich, Liesel is confronted to death for the first time, as her younger brother dies in her arm. In The Book Thief, the majority of the characters are marked by the death of loved ones, and by the guilt to have outlived them. Death shapes, in more than one way, the book thief’s story. Plus, even though the majority of the story is told from an omniscient point of view and in the third person, Death comments Liesel’s story, adding context through flashbacks, teasing through flash-forwards, and digressing in bold sidebars. (And what a narrator, as it will be shown throughout this article!) Death introduces himself in a Prologue written in the first-person. From the film adaptation The Book Thief, 2013, directed by Brian Percival.ĭeath is a constant in The Book Thief, not only because the action takes place during WWII, and Liesel crosses path with Death three times, but also because Death itself is the narrator. Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), in the basement, where she learns to read and write. Those themes are, first of all, cleverly tackled, in a way that often subverts the reader’s expectations and goes behind prejudices, and, secondly, they are deeply linked to a constant reflection around the power of words and literature. Through the many characters the reader meets along the pages, and the complex historical context in which they live, The Book Thief tackles many different themes, but they can be sumed up around three major notions: Death, Humanity, and Books. “ It’s a small story really, about, among other things: Here is how “ devoted Narrator” teases the story in the Prologue: Guided by an original narrator, Death himself, we follow Liesel Meminger, a young orphan girl placed in foster care, nicknamed “the book thief” by Death. The story takes place in Germany around and during WWII. The Book Thief is a book written by the Australian author Markus Zusak and published in 2005.
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