The Book Thief by Markus ZusakDeath.
Imagine what if death was a person. And this person could speak.
Imagine if you could hear it speak, and all of a sudden, it opened its mouth and began narrating to you, a story about a girl;
a girl who was a thief, a thief who stole books…
The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak, is a historical fiction novel. The novel is written in a third-person narrative. But even more interesting an aspect about this narrative is its narrator. The narrator here, is not a human. Rather, the narrator is ‘death’.
Yes!
In this novel, the narrator is none other than the character of Death.
Death narrates the story of a girl named Liesel Meminger. But the story is not only about this girl who relishes words and steals books. The story is also about a small street called Himmel Street, in a small town of Germany, precisely during the rule of Adolf Hitler, the Führer. The story is also about the people and the children and the families living in the boxlike houses sewn into the muddy snow blanketing this street. And the story is also about the tiny pockets of people who were like the subtle splashes of colours on the otherwise gloomy field smattered with ashy charcoal sky of dystopia and chalky-powder mountains of the rubble of war, these were the people who despite the terror blanching the veins of their hearts, liked to see people as people, transcending the boundary that was scribbled under the dictatorship of Hitler.
In simple words, the story features the setting of Nazi Germany, and it revolves around the time period of history when Adolf Hitler triggered the World War II between Nazis and Jews, upon the invasion of Poland.
The book comprises of eighty-eight chapters, divided in chunks among a prologue, an epilogue and ten central story parts.
Another noteworthy highlight of the book is that, it doesn’t only uses the common storytelling technique ‘story-within-a-story’, but also employs an intriguing approach called the ‘books-within-a-book’. Tucked within the chapters of the novel are two little story-sketchbooks, named as ‘The Standover Man’ and ‘The Word Shaker’ respectively.
In a writing style that is thoroughly poetic, almost musical and songlike, the author has embroidered into the book, the emotional gems of friendship, attachment, pain, separation, angst, fury, little joys, family, love, tragedy and above all these, the greatest law of life, that is mortality.
After witnessing her young brother die in her arms, Liesel was abandoned by her mother to a couple named Hans Hubermann and Rosa Hubermann, who would be her new foster parents. Hubermanns lived in a house located in a location named Himmel Street which nestled in a small town of Germany called Molching.
Hans was a painter and accordionist, whereas Rosa did the ironing of clothes for people living nearby. Liesel went to school, played soccer with the neighbourhood gang of kids, ate bread & peasoup that her mother cooked, helped her mother with the delivery of ironed clothes, strolled with her best friend Rudy and in the meantime, she engaged herself with reading the books that she had stolen.
She stole books from ice and fire, and sat in the basement of her house, unraveling the mysterious words printed in the rectangular-square lodgings of old paper.
The first book that she stole was The Grave-digger’s Handbook. She had stolen this black-and-silver pocket book from the ground of the graveyard while the grave-diggers were digging her brother’s grave. To Liesel, the book was not only a stolen treasure, but the last memory of her brother she could cherish, as well.
While this was but only a coincidence, her curiosity for deciphering words led her to steal some more, sometimes from the library of the mayor’s wife, who lived in a house on a slopey hilltop and sometimes, even from the fire set in the town square to commemorate Hitler’s birthday celebration. Yes! In those times, these German people liked to host their celebrations by burning books and papers in the bonfire!
While in her house, Liesel had still not forgotten the dead body of her brother slinging from her arms. Every time she slept, the nightmares of it shook her up and awake from her sleep. And so, to cure this, every day, her father began to teach her to read. They read from the books she had stolen. Often times she wondered that she learned more about words, reading and books from his father than her school where she was taught by an obnoxious Sister Maria who didn’t seem to believe that Liesel could ever read an alphabet. On special occasions, her father brought her books by trading some old used cigarette rolls with a gypsy in the city who took these in return for some money.
Liesel was having the good time of her childhood life.
Until one day, when her life took an unexpected turn…yes, yet another one…
A boy named Max, the son of his father’s old friend from army and a Jew knocked the door of their house to seek a shelter amidst all the outer atmosphere tussled with smoke, rubble and bloodshed of World War II. Hans and Rosa received Max with an open-hearted generosity, despite the heavy terror culminating in their hearts. As time went by, Liesel began to see in Max, her dead brother, only except that he was an elder one and that he was still alive.
Quite soon enough, Liesel grew fond of Max. While he remained in the frozen cold of their basement, camouflaged by several dropsheets and paint buckets, Liesel would often bring to him presents that would enable him to know about the external world, about what was going on in the nature outside. Presents like trashed newspapers with blank crosswords, fallen feathers, leaves, old buttons, candy wrappers, tiny stones and pinecones, of course in addition to her detailed descriptions about where she had discovered these items, and storylike descriptions of the sky, the weather outside…what people were doing, what was air like….things like that…
During this period of time, there was yet another thing going on, besides the various wars initiated by Hitler, and the parades of Jew prisoners. In the town where Liesel lived, there were air-raids, in which several tin-can planes would fire bombs in their street, and the people living there had to hide themselves in some deep underground basement if they were to save themselves.
During these air-raids, Liesel, along with her parents as well as with their neighbours, all the people would snuggle inside the basement of a house owned by a common neighbour Fiedlers.
It was during these times that Liesel began to read stories from the books she had stolen. The stories seemed to distract the people’s minds from extreme fear, misery and sorrow.
Liesel read to people during these times, she read to a neighbour Holtzapfel every day, she read to Max more often than not, and Max gave her the story sketchbooks he had created during all the time he had to remain in the dark basement.
Above and beyond all, Liesel was beginning to heal from her nightmares. The more she saw of Max, the more she realized that there was so much in common to both of them. And so, he kept creating sketchbooks and Liesel kept reading the stolen books.
But it is not for no other struggle that a struggle ends…it seems.
for, in one sudden gash of a moment, Death hovered above the street, loosened and extracted the souls, and took nearly everyone away….
but there was a girl who was left
alive
because when death arrived, it couldn’t find her
because at that time
the girl had been sitting in the basement
busy reading from a book
she had stolen
Death was puzzled,
it grinned and went away
wondering
until the right time then…
In the end, the book signs off with a reedy note that is a mixture of a sensation that is dreadfully numbingly terrorizing and warmly soothingly comforting.
The story is not exactly the one that will cause you to cry. The story is not either the one that will make you smile. Rather, the story is a bittersweet lyric rustling between the scales of melancholy and merriment, rolling between the gloom of terror and the glee of compassion, looming between the shadows of “mortal certainty of death” and “immortal uncertainty of life”.
A soupy swirl of feelings like these…
Life, what is life, it says!
And death, it watches a life named Liesel, it watches her as she falls in love with the thing called ‘words’, and then she hates this thing called ‘words’, and somewhere between this love and hate, she begins to write, because how after all, could she describe this contradictory bittersweetness of love and hate without this thing called words.
Words!
Signing off with a note, here are some words from the book uttered by death.
Death says,
“A small but noteworthy note. I've seen so many young men over the years who think they're running at other young men. They are not. They are running at me.”
True enough!
Well, thank you!
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