The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is not your typical WWII novel where it is coming from a person’s perspective, but from the one thing most people fear, Death. Death is a compassionate character who tells us about a girl growing up in Germany during WWII. She steals books because she wants to learn how to read and she finds comfort in them.
In the prologue, death describes his work for a ‘chocolate brown sky’ when he collects people’s souls. He reveals that he has seen the book thief, Liesel Meminger three times. The first time he saw her was on a train where he had come to collect the soul of a small boy. The next time Death saw the book thief was when a pilot had crashed his plane. The third time he saw the book thief, a German town had been bombed. The book thief was sitting on a pile of rubble, holding a book. Death followed her for a while, and when she dropped her book, he picked it up.
When he encountered Liesel, he titles her as “the book thief” (Zusak 8). Death is described as having emotion over seeing Liesel’s distress, which has been established as out of the ordinary for his character. Zusak creates a perspective by making the readers first believe Death as a figure who is cold-hearted and emotionless when it comes to reaping souls, but also as a character with a soft spot for a little girl. This character trait of death shows the duality of man through a character who is cold, but has another dimension when it comes to his regret for not being able to comfort Liesel.
Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. Print.
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