The Thievery of the Books

I am currently engaged in the reading of The Book Thief. So far I have really enjoyed all of the book. The first couple of pages were extremely difficult to understand. Death kept jumping around telling different random stories of Liesel's life. Finally the story started to become more chronological. There is still a lot of foreshadowing of events to come and references to things that have already occured, but it has become much easier to comprehend. The story is told through Death's eyes which makes it extremely interesting. It is very different for a story of such magnitude to be told from the point of view of a being that doesn't really care. It allows you to think about how the people must be feeling. It allows you to become more engaged in the feelings of the book because they are not simply given to you.

This is also the first WWII novel I have read that shows things from the German's point of view. We tend to think that everybody in Germany was behind Hitler and supported him, but Zusak shows that that was not the case. Germany was not just the rough outer core that we see looking at it. There were real people living real lives trying to survive the horrible conditions that Hitler put in place. It really made me think about how many people didn't want to follow Hitler, but simply submitted to make it easier. I actually had to write a DBQ for the AP Euro exam on the Weimar Republic that was in place before Hitler took over. After studying that era it is very easy to see why people would submit to a strong ruler. They were living in such crappy conditions that any kind of change would have seemed great to them.