Understandings
Themes:
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Symbolism:
Accordion: Throughout the book, the Hans Hubermann's accordion is different symbols. At the being, Hans plays music for Liesel to comfort her in his home and the accordion serves as a cheerful tool. When it is revealed that Hans received the instrument from his Max Vandenburg's father, a friend of his who died while fighting in a war with alongside Hans, the accordion is a symbol of hope. This is especially important for Max to have because he needs optimism that he'll be alive once the Holocaust comes to an end. At the end of the book, Liesel finds the accordion in the rubble which once was her house; at this point, the book embodies death and loss, because it's one of the few things (like the narrator himself) to be surrounding Liesel at this tragic state.
Books: In The Book Thief, books represent freedom. When reading a book, your thoughts are shifted either for that instant or eternally. In this time period, freedom to think differently from the rest of society had to be hidden, but books allowed and provided it. Liesel immersed herself in reading them because that was freedom to her, freedom of thought. While the rest of society remained in confined to the unanimous beliefs and ideas surrounding them, Liesel found that books provided her with new perspectives and fresh ways of thinking, that lead to her freedom of mind.
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Colors: Whenever the narrator Death chooses to describe anything he notices on his own (something not from Liesel's book), he does so with colors. When one's vision is blurred, colors are all they can manage to see. With the book's perspective being from Liesel, someone who is part of the Hitler Youth but still loves a Jew like a brother, that view of the Holocaust can be described as in-between, or blurred. In The Book Thief, colors are used to depict the blurred vision of the Germans who are partially against the Holocaust, but can't portray their feelings without being prosecuted.
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Quotes & Analysis:
“Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond, and the endless atmosphere was a giant blue eye.” (p. 350)
Similar to many of Death's other comments about colors throughout the book, this passage is surprisingly optimistic considering it's context. Death is picturing this beauty while he carries the corpses of hundreds of thousands of Jews to freedom. Although, if this were true, then it'd be strange for Death to the bring this now-free Jews to somewhere with similarities to Germans (blond and blue eyes).
"He made three separate formations that led to the same tower of dominoes in the middle. Together, they would watch everything that was so carefully planned collapse, and they would all smile at the beauty of destruction." (page. 408)
Context ~ This excerpt takes place at the Steiner's house when the a couple Nazi's come to talk to Rudy's parents, with the hope that they will let him go fight for them. The "he" in the passage is Rudy and the "they" are him and his younger sisters.
This quote directly relates to the German government and their plan to reinstitute their economy. In the middle is Adolf Hilter, the Führer himself, and surrounding him is the society he's set up, perfectly in order from his point of view. What he can't see is that the system he has in place is completely unstable, and it's destiny is to fall apart, which it eventually does. Rudy and his sisters (and the majority of the German youth) are simply too young to comprehend the entirety of what is going on outside they're door, so they act as spectators of the wreckage.
"***A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR***
I am haunted by humans"
(p. 550)
I am haunted by humans"
(p. 550)
This is the last and most crucial line for Zusak to directly reveal the point of why he wrote the book. Up until this moment, Zusak had been working up to this line by slowly revealing the complexity of the nature of humans, how they can be both beautiful and completely destructive at the same time. Death, the narrator, is perplexed by how society can be made up of blessed moments in a world of demolition, but mainly how it is all the cause of one complex creature: humans. Death's fear for humans is completely ironic considering how often and greatly humans fear the thought of dying. With the narrator being Death, a completely new perspective as to what humans are capable of producing is shown to be completely terrifying