Summer Assignment #2 (7/02)

     For this post, we have to describe what each of the main characters want. So, I'll start with the most prominent character, who I talked about in the first post. So Liesel is learning to read and that's her main focus but as the narration put it, "What was there to be angry about? What had happened in the past four or five months to culminate in such a feeling? In short, the answer traveled from Himmel Street, to the Fuhrer, to the unfindable location of her real mother, and back again. Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness." I think that this starts to get Liesel a lot more developed in the story as her deep thoughts and motives are foreshadowed in this short passage. Her foster parents, like most people in their village, want to just stay alive but still keep their morality by helping a Jewish man stay there in secret for months. The Jewish man wants, like them, to stay alive but he also enjoys the time because he reads at night with Liesel. Those are really all of the characters with clear or implied wants/fears.

      One theme I think is appearing in the book, particularly emphasized by Death being the narrator is, "Life is so short so don't worry about the small things and make something out of your life, since it can be taken away at any time." I think this is one theme because the book is about these people that have physical problems (such as starving or for the Jewish man being killed), but what the book more focuses on are the moral problems (usually relating to putting yourself in more risk of the physical problems). I think this is a good theme because we are so focused on the things that don't matter when you step back and look at your whole life. We should focus more on what really matters and less on little problems.

      I already briefly referenced how the book is structured in the first post, but I'll get a little more detailed in this one. The book is narrated by Death, portrayed as sarcastic and humorous in this book. His little side comments are found every few pages and give some information to an interesting translation (because some of the insults are in German) or give us some information that we otherwise wouldn't have about a new character's background or relationship to the story. The rest of the story is just plain narration with some dialogue but more of the story as opposed to the characters talking. This is probably on purpose so the narrator can put in some of the character's thoughts and emotions instead of the reader having to try and figure that out from dialogue (because obviously you don't just blurt out everything you think and feel to the world so it's simpler for the reader).

I found an interview transcript with the author, Markus Zusak, and I thought it was really good and talks about what he thinks of the book and how he structured it and why.