Matthew Sapunor

YA Final Writing Task

The Book Thief
5.19.2014

The first World War was considered to be the war to end wars. Hitler the Fuhrer of
modern German state post World War I era, created a culture of hate that is completely
integrated into the German consciousness. When is war worth the cost and how do we resolve
or prevent conflict? Throughout our studies in Modern World Studies, this question has been
proposed many times, and I noticed that there is more to war than just the lost of resources and
people. Death discusses his feelings and views about war and humans within the idea of being
viewer of the Hubermanns, Death think that war is worth the cost, but he is haunted by the
violence of war and cost of human lives only benefit him.
In one of the books we read called Book Thief what I found interesting was the Mark
Zusak made the narrator Death. You may be thinking Death represents a Grim Reaper, Death
in Book Thief sorrowful for the people of Jewish descent. He sometimes pitties them. Death is a
weary and cynical character. Death at one point says, You want to know what I truly look like? I
will help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue (307). I think Deaths says this because
he is showing how the Nazis are mass killing their own human kind. I think that this saying is
that the Nazis are just as bad or even worse than Death himself.
Now Liesel Meminger from the Book Thief is a little German girl is very insightful and in
my opinion is very mature for her age. Death as the narrator is following her journey throughout
the Holocaust. Isla Herman, the mayors wife, notices Liesels struggles and gives her a blank
book to write her story in. I saw this as a kind gesture in a very dark time. The last thing that
Liesel wrote in the book I have hated the words and I have love them, I have hope and I hope I
have made them right (528). I really think this helps Liesel mentally and an outlet. This means a
lot to me because it shows how throughout of the evil and death some sort of light peers
through the darkness that the Nazis created. Death knows that humans can create a world that
is like hell on Earth, Im haunted by humans (550). I cannot imagine that Deaths inability to
understand or rationalize the systematic and inhumane actions of the Nazis, but he was not able
to believe that humans can create more death than Death himself.
Along with Liesel, Max the little Jewish boy that the Hubermanns are risking their lives to
hide to keep alive. Because they believe in something different they believe that what the
Germans are doing is wrong. The Hubermanns are the light that shines through the cracks in
the dark place Matt also wrote his story just like Liesel. He was a bit different. It goes like this,
the word shaker and the young man climbed up the horizontal trunk. They navigated the
branches and began to walk. When they looked back, they noticed that the majority of onlookers
had started to return to their own places in there, out there forrest. But as they walked on they
stopped several times to listen. They thought that they could hear voices and words behind
them, on the shakers tree (450). The Hubermanns were again the few Germans who felt that
Hitlers treatment of the Jews was wrong. They protested his violence and segregation of the
Jew only in silence.
Finally we get to the end of the road with the Book Thief, it has shown Death in a
different perspective. It helped Death answer the driving question in away he never considered
before. I think that war is not always the same, there are always things to consider. Things like if
war is worth the cost, what are you risking? How many people will die and how many people will
suffer. Is it always worth the cost? Can you confidently say that war is always worth the cost.
Death has seen violent wars brought on by humans and he is extremely confused about why
humans are this way. Death is haunted by the actions of evil and evil humans. In the end, Death
is not evil, he is harbinger of death but not evil.