Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Death the Narrator

I think that The Book Thief is an interesting and unique book. With the narrator death, we are able to get a different feeling and understanding about death which we would not have gotten if the book was story from the perspective of the main character, Liesel or anyone else. I think that death had some human like qualities. Death felt sadness. Sadness was prevalent in Liesel's life and something that she often felt from the death of her brother and the disappearance of her mother. I almost feel that death related to her mother too. It was like her mother was dead to her, she had no idea what happened to her or where she was. Death surrounded her. It was during the time of World War, and the Nazi's were killing innocent people. The death's throughout the story are all to innocent people, people who do not deserve to die. I enjoyed seeing how Liesel was able to see some happiness through much happiness through her friendship with the young boy. It gives her a chance to be happy and not have such negative feelings. Overall, I liked this book. I have never read anything quite like it, even the chapters were broken up in a different way. I think that author did a good job of thinking of qualities that represent death and tying it into the story.
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3 comments:

  1. Amy ONovember 1, 2011 at 9:39 AM

    I also really enjoyed this book. At first I thought that having death as a narrator made the story confusing and I didn’t really understand why death would be telling this story. When I later realized that death was such a present theme in the story I realized that this was the perfect narrator. I think that having death as a narrator gives this story a unique quality that separates it from other stories that are similar to this one. Although the story takes time to get into I think it is one worth reading. It was interesting to see the story told through liesels eyes. Her experiences I think can teach readers a lot.

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  2. Tayler SNovember 1, 2011 at 10:29 AM

    I agree with the fact that the author did a great job tying the theme of death into the story. I found it interesting that death was not there with the purpose of killing people. He was there to do his job, which was collecting souls. I, personally, did not see death as the "bad guy" in this book. Death mentions how he carefully walks around people, rather than just walking through them as we would think a ghost-like figure would do. I think this makes the readers think of death as more of a real person than a fictional, scary character. All these elements combined made for a great story that is both unique and intriguing.

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  3. AshleyNovember 1, 2011 at 10:29 AM

    I really enjoyed having Death as the Narrator, I liked the idea that Death is not really War's Best Friend. But that Death is ruled by War. To see Death humanized and made to be horrified by the atrocities that humans can commit was something that I haven't seen before. One aspect I really enjoyed about having Death as the Narrator was the way that Death described carrying the human souls. How he described the colors and the feelings that they were feeling made Death a much more tangible person/idea. To have him talk about carrying the children's souls and wishing that he could take the souls of the Jewish people before they would suffer made him more real to me.

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