The Book Thief post 3

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I think the blog postings are making my braincells suicide...
They are dying!
DYING, I tell you...!!!
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Let's do a bit of character analysis.
How does that sound?


While many believed that the main character in The Book Thief is Liesel, I think the narrator, Death, dominated the scenes.
Instead of making Death a daunting character, Zusak shaped Death as a sensitive, gentle and humane being who somehow sick of but also enjoying his daily job.
At the very beginning, when Death introduced himself to the readers, he already introduced the book's plot, the contradictory and helplessness of life:

"The question is, what color will everything be at that moment when I come for you? What will the sky be saying? Personally, I like a chocolate-colored sky. Dark, dark chocolate. People say it suits me. I do, however, try to enjoy every color I see--the whole spectrum. A billion or so flavors, none of them quite the same, and a sky to slowly suck on. It takes the edges off the stress. It helps me relax."

Death, being such a unique character and his job as the character who told the story, was very influential. The things he see, the way he describe things, and many more, makes the story very different from if told by Liesel or any other human. And I will write about that in the next blog posting.
The brutishness of war, the partings, either between life and death or goodbyes, were told through Death's rich emotions and the view point of a bystander and led the reader through many ups and downs of how literature can influence people.
When Liesel was rescued from the bombing, Death picked up the black book that Liesel has been written in--The Book Thief-- during the complete chaos. At the very end, when Liesel died and met Death, he gave The Book Thief back to her. She was very surprised that her story was read before, furthermore, someone understood her story.

As I said in the last post, this is a story about the ability of books to feed the soul. About how literature transformed people.
Aside from the book but in the book's setting. The well-known book that was published in World War II, written by Adolf Hitler, My Struggle.
Many became the follower of Hitler after the book, while many became a strong opposition of his. My Struggle, instead of just a book, became the way Hitler secure his power in the society. People were required to own the book, carry the book, hold nothing against the book, believe the book, and most importantly, read the book. If one does not read the book or does not fulfill anything listed above, one would be considered unfaithful to Hitler.
Besides brain-washing purposes, literature also serves as educational tools. People learn lessons from books in general. Themes in each book teach us lessons that we will never forget.