The Book Thief

"The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak is a beautiful and dark story about human nature.  In my opinion it is a bread and butter book or maybe it is a butter and bread book.  What would you expect from a story told by Death?  It is not your typical story.  Death in this case is quite poetic, telling us the color of the sky and the weight of the souls he carried into it and how that weight grew in the 1940’s throughout Nazi Germany.  He swirls this language on top of a thick, crusty, somewhat stale yet entirely welcome foundation of a bready story of a pre-teen girl named Liesel Meminger. And yet the story itself isn't stale because of Death’s poetic approach.

Through direct foreshadowing, Death lets the reader know what to expect throughout the story’s entirety.  It reminds me of Shakespeare’s “star-crossed lovers,” as the reader knows from the very beginning that its characters will not have a happy ending; however, The Book Thief points out that life itself is a “star-crossed” love story: all of us are dying; it’s just a matter of when and how and perhaps the color of the sky.  No matter how many stories are told about the Titanic, the giant ship still sinks at the end and so it is with Nazi Germany: it still sinks and it pulls many people down with it, not necessarily innocent people – just people.

This book makes us question humanity: what is good, what is evil, and what is true.  The story, the bread of this book makes the reader struggle along with its characters, but it is a struggle well worth the effort.  Its powerful message reminded me of three things:

1.                   Milgram’s social psychology experiment

Three volunteers were involved in the experiment: an experimenter who was the authority figure, a teacher who carried out the experimenter's directions, and a subject who was acting as the test figure. The experimenter commanded the teacher to shock the subject every time the subject (keep in mind the subject was acting and not actually being shocked) got an answer incorrectly. A surprising 65% of teachers used the highest voltage at the experimenter’s command.  Milgram stated that “Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process.” (For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment.)  I think that statement describes the situation of the characters in The Book Thief perfectly.  “Heil Hitler” was a part of life for them whether or not they believed in what it stood for or not.  It was a means of survival.  I think that the innate desire to survive supersedes all philosophical discussions about the nature of humanity, its need to obey authority, and its inevitable pull between good and evil.

S. Farley’s Ferret

I remember sitting on the floor in Miss McDowell’s 3^rd grade class.  This was the first time I had heard the term “Nazi”.  I was wearing a dress and my knees were skinned, yet I sat cross legged on the floor just like the other students.  S. Farley had brought his pet ferret to class that day with permission from the teacher.  It darted around our legs; its fuzzy body pushing against us playfully.  Miss McDowell taught us about the Holocaust and told us how Hitler and the Nazis were trying to create a superior race of people with only blonde hair and blue eyes.  Stephen Farley and I looked directly at each other, our blonde hair unmistakable, our blue eyes questioning if we were somehow better than the tanned faces and dark hair and eyes of the other children in the room.   The question only lasted a split second before all of those other faces turned their stares back and forth between the two of us as if we were responsible for the deaths of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany.  No, we were certainly not better than anyone else.  As I began to feel this weight, which was very heavy on the shoulders of an 8 year old, I felt the fuzzy ferret dart up my dress and rest on my outer thigh.  I’m sure the judgmental and accusatory stares continued, but I chose to focus on the fuzzy ferret and refused to believe that the color of my skin, hair, and eyes made me a monster.  Just as it is wrong for people to persecute those who are different from themselves because of those differences; it is wrong to accuse and assume that those who have the same physical features of monsters also have the same beliefs.  Not all Germans were Nazis and not all Nazis believed in Hitler; they all believed in survival and fought to live.

The Power of the Word

Words are extremely powerful in the labels that we give one another that essentially define our roles in the world: Experimenter, Teacher, Subject, Nazi, Jew, or even Blonde and in the stories of our lives that push us to keep learning from each other and to keep living for each other.  Words have the power to destruct, the power to save, and according to The Book Thief even the power to inspire Death.

Any book that has the ability to push the reader to reflect on  their own beliefs and fully consider its story and its characters is as essential as bread and butter.