Because maybe, you’re gonna be the one that saves me. And after all, you’re my wonderwall.
“Haunted by humans”
(the photo is not mine)
Narrated by Death, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old German girl who given up by her mother to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the small town of Molching in 1939, shortly before World War II. On their way to Molching, Liesel’s younger brother Werner dies, and she is traumatized, experiencing nightmares about him for months. Hans is a gentle man who brings her comfort and helps her learn to read, starting with a book Liesel took from the cemetery where her brother was buried. Liesel befriends a neighborhood boy, Rudy Steiner, who falls in love with her. At a book burning, Liesel realizes that her father was persecuted for being a Communist, and that her mother was likely killed by the Nazis for the same crime. She is seen stealing a book from the burning by the mayor’s wife Ilsa Hermann, who later invites Liesel to read in her library.
Keeping a promise he made to the man who saved his life, Hans agrees to hide a Jew named Max Vandenberg in his basement. Liesel and Max become close friends, and Max writes Liesel two stories about their friendship, both of which are reproduced in the novel. When Hans publicly gives bread to an old Jew being sent to a concentration camp, Max must leave, and Hans is drafted into the military at a time when air raids over major German cities were escalating in terms of frequency and fatality. Liesel next sees Max being marched towards the concentration camp at Dachau. Liesel loses hope and begins to disdain the written word, having learnt that Hitler’s propaganda is to blame for the war and the Holocaust and the death of her biological family, but Ilsa encourages her to write. Liesel writes the story of her life in the Hubermanns’ basement, where she miraculously survives an air raid that kills Hans, Rosa, Rudy, and everyone else on her block. Liesel survives the war, as does Max. She goes on to live a long life and dies at an old age (Gradesaver.com).
On the last part of the novel is a quote, “I am haunted by humans”. The Book Thief is framed by Death’s contemplation of the worth of humanity, and Death’s inability to reconcile the remarkable cruelty and the remarkable compassion of which human beings are simultaneously capable. Liesel’s life story contains elements of both, and by the end of the novel, Death appears to be no more capable of judging humanity than at the novel’s outset. Thus, Death tells Liesel that it is “haunted” by humans, just as humans are haunted by Death. A jaded metaphysical being so used to dying could only be fearful of - and, at times, amazed by - those who live.
One of the moral lessons that Liesel learns in The Book Thief is that even in the heart of tragedy, good is still possible.:-)
