Before I start the review as proper, there’s something I have to talk about in regards to the last post:
This blog is designed with a specific goal in mind. Apart from the obvious goal of reviewing The Book Thief, I am also striving to combine critical analysis with the joy of reading. At the end of my previous review, I feel it is safe to say that I veered straight off the course of critical analysis in more ways than one.
I have tried to avoid this, at least in these reviews, but the events in the last chapter struck home too hard for me so combined with Zusak’s vivid writing I had such a strong emotional reaction that when I was done I feared it was not even publishable. I considered editing the entire thing in fact for fear I would be labeled an immature spaz or an attention whore. But I decided this would be dishonest in portraying my reaction. So I hope you read it knowing why I wrote it the way that I did and know I will try my best to be analytical and professional from here on out without letting the story affect me to the point of childishness that I regressed to the way that it did.
To start off, Part Two is titled “the shoulder shrug“, perhaps Death and humanity at large’s answer as to why such senseless cruelty and mass death was taking place all over the world during this time.
The subtitle is
featuring:
a girl made of darkness – the joy of cigarettes – a town walker – some dead letters – hitler’s birthday – 100 percent pure german sweat – the gates of thievery – and a book of fire
This makes it fairly easy to figure out what is likely to come:
I mean, “a girl made of darkness” – that’s obviously Liesel and we damn well know why.
The second, third, and fourth subtitles are very confusing, however. Perhaps the second refers to Liesel’s only solace being her bond with Hans or Hans’ only solace being his cigarettes in the terrible war years that he’s already lived and fought through once. I don’t know what to make of the latter two, though.
It’s pretty easy to figure out what the rest mean, though: something will happen at Hitler’s birthday, the Nazis will march, there will probably be some sort of severe anti-Jewish acts, and then Liesel will steal the second book.
A GIRL MADE OF DARKNESS
But even if we didn’t know where Part Two would be taking us, even if some reader couldn’t make heads or tails of the subtitle, Zusak spells out where it will end at the very beginning of this chapter, which serves basically as a prologue for the part to come, much like the 4 chapters that introduced the whole book.
*** SOME STATISTICAL INFORMATION ***
First stolen book: January 13, 1939
Second stolen book: April 20, 1940
Duration between said stolen books: 463 days
I have a deep-seated love for history, timeline chronology and specific dates, so I feel like starting off the first chapter like this is something put here specifically for me.
And it’s an enjoyable way of showing us how long we have to wait for this, for the purpose obviously is to prep us for said event, as he makes sure to flagrantly spell out for us right here:
The problem, however, is this:
This is no time to be flippant.
It’s no time to be half watching, turning around, or checking the stove-because when the book thief stole her second book, not only were there many factors involved in her hunger to do so, but the act of stealing it triggered the crux of what was to come.
Translation: THIS IS REALLY REALLY SERIOUS BUSINESS, HAVE YOU GOT THAT? HAVE YOU GOT THAT? NO?!!!!
But the problem is this. Zusak’s foreshadowing often feels more like blatantly spoiling what’s to come. In fact, there’s so much of it that it feels like we’ve already read these events rather than being teased for them to come.
It would provide her with a venue for continued book thievery. It would inspire Hans Hubermann to come up with a plan to help the Jewish fist fighter.
You see, he gives us so much information that it honestly feels like I’ve skipped several chapters ahead. In fact, I actually wonder if the book would make just as much sense if I just skipped to Part 3 or Part 6, even.
I will grant that he does close this segment with a rather poetic and well-written thought:
And it would show me, once again, that one opportunity leads directly to another, just as risk leads to more risk, life to more life, and death to more death.
But then he keeps giving us just so many facts, one after the other. With the Rudy Steiner Incident, he told us so much ahead of time we didn’t really need to see it, except for Rudy’s conversation with his father in the end.
In regards to what I presume is going to be the big climax to this part, he’s already told us Liesel rescued the second book from a fire, and now he tells us that it was a book burning held by the Nazis, tells us what the book is and what it looks like, and tells us how Liesel felt about stealing it afterwards, why she did it in the first place, and tells us when it happened.
However, he does in the process give us an interesting perspective by Death about the Germans’ frequent arsons, which does well at imagining what someone unaccustomed to human culture might think of it.
And maybe I shouldn’t be harsh without knowing the bigger picture. It’s just that I like to be surprised, and maybe I should focus on this aspect of his writing again once I have the full picture.
He does seem to be doing everything I’ve complained about on purpose, honestly, and may even want me to have the reaction I had. There is some promising foreshadowing here:
At the end of an afternoon that had contained much excitement, much beautiful evil, one blood-soaked ankle, and a slap from a trusted hand, Liesel Meminger attained her second success story.
You see, the reason why this foreshadowing is so well done is because he’s teasing us with elements that don’t make sense yet, but intrigue us, and make us eager to read to see how they all pop into place with what we’ve been told so far. So maybe he’s not doing as bad a job as I thought.
Oh, and I love this. Liesel is just angry in general now, quite understandably so, and Death has the audacity to say this:
The question, of course, should be why?
What was there to be angry about?
What had happened in the past four or five months to culminate in such a feeling?
It might be more fitting to ask why she shouldn’t be “a girl made of darkness”.
Like most misery, it started with apparent happiness.
Yes, we get it! You gave Liesel the worst experience ever, made us expect the worst for her, then gave her a bundle of happiness out of nowhere for an uninterrupted 8 months, just to ruin it again with the worst things ever! For crying out loud, STOP BEING SUCH A SADIST.
THE JOY OF CIGARETTES
Now we get the answer as to why Liesel being “a girl made of darkness” was a strange thing by April 20, 1940.
One-by-one, in an almost poetic fashion, Zusak checks off all the problems in her life (except for missing Werner and her mother) and ends with the following summing-up:
All of this resulted in at least some form of contentment and would soon be built upon to approach the concept of Being Happy.
It’s easy to relate to such beautiful writing, though in passages like this, Zusak comes off a bit too warm and human for the voice of Death:
She loved and hated her best friend, Rudy Steiner, which was perfectly normal.
And seriously, I can’t believe that HE’S DOING IT AGAIN HE’S DOING IT AGAIN! I swear, it’s like he knows I’m here reviewing this book! I tell him to stop being a sadist and he pretends to go along with it in such a blatantly sarcastic tone.
*** THE KEYS TO HAPPINESS ***
1. Finishing The Grave Digger’s Handbook.
2. Escaping the ire of Sister Maria.
3. Receiving two books for Christmas.
I hope that these goals will be reached. Even if the happiness will be abruptly smashed right after that, I’m still going to keep my check list handy and cheer at their fulfillment.
December 17.
She remembered the date well, as it was exactly a week before Christmas.
So either there’s no hope at all or the race will be starting, for the timer has been set.
As usual, her nightly nightmare interrupted her sleep and she was woken by Hans Hubermann. His hand held the sweaty fabric of her pajamas. “The train?” he whispered.
Liesel confirmed. “The train.”
The book proceeds like a simple check-off list.
When the book closed, they shared a sideways glance. Papa spoke.
“We made it, huh?”
Liesel, half-wrapped in blanket, studied the black book in her hands and its silver lettering. She nodded, dry-mouthed and early-morning hungry. It was one of those moments of perfect tiredness, of having conquered not only the work at hand, but the night who had blocked the way.
Finishing The Grave Digger’s Handbook.- Escaping the ire of Sister Maria.
- Receiving two books for Christmas.
And now we get something interesting:
One afternoon, she was tempted to steal a book from the class bookshelf, but frankly, the prospect of another corridor Watschen at the hands of Sister Maria was a powerful enough deterrent. On top of that, there was actually no real desire in her to take the books from school. It was most likely the intensity of her November failure that caused this lack of interest, but Liesel wasn’t sure. She only knew that it was there.
Death seemed to make it clear Liesel stole her second book due to anger likely at the Nazi Party, so it seems strange that her urge to steal books is suddenly showing itself here. I mean, I get that it’s to provide additional motivation for taking the second book in May, and she wants to practice reading, but she didn’t show much interest in stealing books before (except for Death’s foreshadowing in the future), so pointing it out as a lack of interest now seems odd.
Also, Liesel comes off a tad too unsympathetic here:
As winter set in, she was no longer a victim of Sister Maria’s frustrations, preferring to watch as others were marched out to the corridor and given their just rewards. The sound of another student struggling in the hallway was not particularly enjoyable, but the fact that it was someone else was, if not a true comfort, a relief.
This lack of empathy from people bothers me so much, and that was what triggered Liesel’s violent anger in the first place. So I can’t let this go by without comment. I mean, Liesel, it isn’t someone else! Just because it is not physically you in there this time doesn’t matter. You are not somehow magically more important than those other kids.
But, oh, whatever:
Finishing The Grave Digger’s Handbook.Escaping the ire of Sister Maria.- Receiving two books for Christmas.
And we cut right to Christmas!
Knowing that the Hubermanns were essentially broke, still paying off debts and paying rent quicker than the money could come in, she was not expecting a gift of any sort.
What? I’m sorry. That came out of nowhere. With all the stuff Death tells us that hasn’t happened yet, why didn’t we ever know about the Hubermanns’ financial problems before? It seems so strange to have it be mentioned here for the first time.
Perhaps only some better food.
Well, aw, so much for that check list, anyway.
To her surprise, on Christmas Eve, after sitting in church at midnight with Mama, Papa, Hans Junior, and Trudy, she came home to find something wrapped in newspaper under the Christmas tree.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yay!…… Wait, Hans, Jr. and Trudy are there? That’s strange. Why don’t we get more attention paid to them? I have to say, Zusak is much too impersonal at times.
We do get this, though:
Unfurling the paper, she unwrapped two small books.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Finishing The Grave Digger’s Handbook.Escaping the ire of Sister Maria.Receiving two books for Christmas.
HAPPY HAPPY! LIESEL HAS UNLOCKED ALL THREE OF THE KEYS OF HAPPINESS! I NEVER THOUGHT IT WOULD HAPPEN BUT IT DID IT DID. YAAAAAAY! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂
They are completely fictional books written by fictional authors, by the way: Faust the Dog by Mattheus Ottleberg and The Lighthouse by Ingrid Rippinstein.
And befitting Zusak’s style of giving us way too much information, Liesel reads the former 13 times and the latter a mere 9, and I have to say wow. Excluding picture books with no chapters when I was a child, I have never tended to re-read books at all. In fact, I think the only one I have read 13 times and probably more is Raggedy Ann & Andy and the Camel with the Wrinkled Knees. It’s also the only chapter book I’ve read anywhere near 9 times. And wow, that was embarrassing to admit.
Also, we’re being very meta here. I probably should have commented earlier, but I thought it went without saying that the reason a lot of book lovers probably love this book so much is because there is a lot of just plain celebrating the joy of books in passages like this. I don’t know if he wants this book used to teach a child to read, though, but one thing is for sure: it would definitely be just as morbid and inappropriate as The Grave Digger’s Handbook!
There’s something I probably shouldn’t ignore, though:
On Christmas Eve, she read the first twenty pages at the kitchen table while Papa and Hans Junior argued about a thing she did not understand. Something called politics.
This is the only thing that comes close to putting a damper on the happiness that’s on display here. I mean, these people, even though they’re living in Germany 74 years ago, feel so much like any family it’s easy to transplant meaningless political arguments our own family members have had over the holidays. But this is a few months into WWII, so is there really some horrible political clash between Hans and his son? Will Hans’ son later become a Nazi? It’s very easy to ignore, for the reasons I stated, but I find myself worrying here. (Also I knew perfectly well what politics were when I was ten years old. I had longwinded conversations with my father about the presidential election when I was eight, for that matter.)
But wait! One more thing: How did the Hubermanns manage to pay for the books, if they are so poor? Well, in the midst of some really glaring and kind of laughable visual analogies, we figure out and get our explanation for the very strange chapter title:
“That Saukerl,” she said. “You know what he did? He rolled up all of his filthy cigarettes, went to the market when it was in town, and traded them with some gypsy.”
“Eight cigarettes per book.” Papa shoved one to his mouth, in triumph. He lit up and took in the smoke. “Praise the Lord for cigarettes, huh, Mama?”
I’d like to clarify that I am in fact a 100% heterosexual male, and if Hans Hubermann were to show up at my door in any given moment in time I would break Ohio law to marry him in a heartbeat. Hell, even Rosa’s complaining doesn’t destroy the beautiful and flawless happiness we have on display here. She’s lovable in her own way as we’ve become endeared to her, and Hans puts a stop to it anyway. Of course he does.
It appeared that there was great joy in cigarettes, and it was a happy time in the Hubermann household.
So all is well at the end of this chapter. I can close the book now with a feeling of complete contentment and peace in the world. Things are perfect and they are going to stay that way forever.
Oh, wait. There’s one more sentence. Huh. Well, that’s odd.
It ended a few weeks later.
I literally just sat staring at these six words for quite some time, unwilling to believe my mind hadn’t made it up, and then when it proved tangible I just cracked up laughing. I mean, he’s here. Markus Zusak likes to switch through time just like Death, and while he was reading the book he kept looking in to see how I would react carefully watching every word I type, and then he constructed the whole book around emotionally manipulating me and responding to everything I say.
Well, Markus, my man, more than one consecutive week of flawless happiness is more than I ever expected out of you, so I will accept it gladly. Tank you veddy much.
THE TOWN WALKER
But he wastes no time in throwing us into the sadness:
The rot started with the washing and it rapidly increased.
There are so many examples of obvious foreshadowing in the book that I’ve probably given Zusak short-shrift. I’ve started to get the impression that a lot of it was done to distract from the more subtle foreshadowing. I mean, remember when I said that all the material relating to Rosa and Liesel delivering washing around town was pointless and you could cut out that entire chapter? Well, now Zusak’s really decided to taunt me and make me feel stupid for that assumption:
When Liesel accompanied Rosa Hubermann on her deliveries across Molching, one of her customers, Ernst Vogel, informed them that he could no longer afford to have his washing and ironing done. “The times,” he excused himself, “what can I say? They’re getting harder. The war’s making things tight.” He looked at the girl. “I’m sure you get an allowance for keeping the little one, don’t you?”
This happened to me with Rowling a few times, too, but it’s interesting to deal with an author who constantly circumvents and challenges your critiques. I mean, this isn’t the ideal method of reviewing, since I’m not getting the full picture. I may think I’ve got it all figured out by how much Zusak teases us with what’s to come, but really I don’t know what lies ahead. And it doesn’t help that I don’t have a very thorough knowledge of World War II. So I don’t really know how it affected the people in Germany. Jews, sure, the people being bombed in London, yeah. But when did things get bad for GERMANY, when did they start fighting back, to the point that Hitler supporters were inconvenienced by the war? That’s what I don’t know, so I’m actually more clueless than Zusak probably expects, honestly.
What is noteworthy is that even Rosa is shocked by this:
To Liesel’s dismay, Mama was speechless.
All she did was rant about these people, so it probably is a bad sign that she’s just horrified by the war and worried about what’s to come. I mean, the main complaints we heard from her about Vogel was that he was ugly and would scratch his hair and lick his fingers when he handed over the money, in addition to the fact that he wasted his money on alcohol and the washing (yes, she was brazen about that!), which would lead her to expect the worst when he’s stingy about money.
And she seems to be a bit too harsh on Liesel, as a result:
That night, when Liesel had a bath, Mama scrubbed her especially hard, muttering the whole time about that Vogel Saukerl and imitating him at two-minute intervals. “‘You must get an allowance for the girl. …'” She berated Liesel’s naked chest as she scrubbed away. “You’re not worth that much, Saumensch. You’re not making me rich, you know.”
Liesel sat there and took it.
It seemed like there was something lovable about her curmudgeonness before, but now as her frustration grows and she orders Liesel to start doing all the washing and lie to them about Rosa being sick to get pity, she’s just being so harsh with the poor girl who’s done nothing wrong that we can’t find any affection, and it’s kind of disturbing.
For a moment, it appeared that her foster mother would comfort her or pat her on the shoulder.
Good girl, Liesel. Good girl. Pat, pat, pat.
She did no such thing.
Instead, Rosa Hubermann stood up, selected a wooden spoon, and held it under Liesel’s nose. It was a necessity as far as she was concerned. “When you’re out on that street, you take the bag to each place and you bring it straight home, with the money, even though it’s next to nothing. No going to Papa if he’s actually working for once. No mucking around with that little Saukerl, Rudy Steiner. Straight. Home.”
But we do get something pleasant, not only in Liesel’s one-time playful disregard for Rosa’s order on how to handle the bag. One of the things I loved about The Secret Garden was its message about the power of positive thinking, and how it was that that sold the fairy-tale like sentiment and silly mood of the story in the very true fact that whether a situation is terrible or not often depends on the extremes that we view them in. Very similarly, here, we get a very well-done, wholly deliberate contrast between the way Liesel dealt with the washing chore and looked at her employers from the way Rosa did. Back in the chapter I described as superfluous, Zusak used the narrative voice to carefully outline everything Rosa disliked about the neighbors, and now that the narrative is focused on Liesel, we get an analysis of the same things, only with Liesel finding affection and fondness in the very traits Rosa despised.
She came to like the people, too:
* The Pfaffelhürvers, inspecting the clothes and saying, ” Ja, ja, sehr gut, sehr gut.” Liesel imagined that they did everything twice.
* Gentle Helena Schmidt, handing the money over with an arthritic curl of the hand.
* The Weingartners, whose bent-whiskered cat always answered the door with them. Little Goebbels, that’s what they called him, after Hitler’s right-hand man.
* And Frau Hermann, the mayor’s wife, standing fluffy-haired and shivery in her enormous, cold-aired doorway. Always silent. Always alone. No words, not once.
Character contrast, I love you more than most things. (And that Liesel proceeds to flout the “no mucking around with Rudy Steiner” rule.)
We then get an abrupt shift, however, as Liesel and Rudy are assigned to write letters to other students in school.
Liesel’s letter from Rudy went like this:
Dear Saumensch,
Are you still as useless at soccer as you were the last time you played? I hope so. That means I can run past you again just like Jesse Owens at the Olympics. …
I like how Zusak includes comic relief like this and does not seem to keep the story from getting too dark and heavy, at least at this point. And it’s nice to know Liesel has a good friend in the dark times that lie ahead.
It disturbs me how violent these nuns are, though:
When Sister Maria found it, she asked him a question, very amiably.
*** SISTER MARIA’S OFFER ***
“Do you feel like visiting the corridor, Mr. Steiner?”
My brother is a devout Catholic, but I find myself very wary of religions (Catholicism and Lutheranism) whose practitioners seem to enjoy beating small children for whatever excuse they can conjure. Probably just me.
At home, while completing a letter for homework, Liesel decided that writing to Rudy or some other Saukerl was actually ridiculous. It meant nothing. As she wrote in the basement, she spoke over to Papa, who was repainting the wall again.
…
“Would I be able to write a letter to Mama?”
A pause.
“What do you want to write a letter to her for? You have to put up with her every day.” Papa was schmunzeling-a sly smile. “Isn’t that bad enough?”
“Not that mama.” She swallowed.
Well, this is an interesting turn of events. I’m glad the narrative turned to this point, because I was wondering about Liesel’s mother. It’s bad enough she doesn’t know anything about where her own father is. I would like to get an update on her mother’s location.
“Frau Heinrich.”
“That’s right. Send it to her. Maybe she can send it on to your mother.” Even at the time, he sounded unconvincing, as if he wasn’t telling Liesel something. Word of her mother had also been tightlipped on Frau Heinrich’s brief visits.
Oh, God, no. Why? Why can we not have nice things? This is terrible, isn’t it?
It took three hours and six drafts to perfect the letter, telling her mother all about Molching, her papa and his accordion, the strange but true ways of Rudy Steiner, and the exploits of Rosa Hubermann. She also explained how proud she was that she could now read and write a little.
Zusak, why must you break my heart like this? The poor girl. I can’t imagine having the patience to write six drafts of a letter to anyone now, let alone back when I was only just learning to read. Talking to her mother means so much to her.
But she doesn’t even get peaceful dreams, because this is what she overhears in bed:
“What’s she doing writing to her mother?” Mama was saying. Her voice was surprisingly calm and caring. As you can imagine, this worried the girl a great deal. She’d have preferred to hear them arguing. Whispering adults hardly inspired confidence.
“She asked me,” Papa answered, “and I couldn’t say no. How could I?”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” Again with the whisper. “She should just forget her. Who knows where she is? Who knows what they’ve done to her?”
OH MY GOD, THIS IS SO HORRIBLE! My props to you, Mr. Zusak. This all feels so real and vivid. It’s bad enough she lost her brother forever, it’s not enough she knows next to nothing about her father and where she is, her mother is probably being tortured by Nazis, right now. And she doesn’t even have a clue why!
There are certain things in books that are so strange and mysterious that I just beg to turn the pages because it’s no longer just a passive reading experience. It feels as real to me as anything in my life because I literally can’t believe what I’m reading and I honestly don’t have a clue what’s happening and what lies ahead. And I have to get back to the book because my whole mind is alive with wondering “Why? What does this mean? What is going to happen?”
What is a tesseract? What did it mean to Mrs. Murry, and how does this strange woman have a connection with that and with something that obviously meant something to Meg’s mother? Who and what is this mysterious Mrs. Whatsit, anyhow? And why is Charles Wallace so strange?
Why does Snape have such an irrational and inexplicable hatred of Harry?
Why does Moody seem to have a bad history with Igor Karkaroff?
And now:
Where was she?
What had they done to her?
And once and for all, who, in actual fact, were they?
I WANT TO KNOW!
DEAD LETTERS
Okay, seriously, this book just gets more and more bizarre!
Flash forward to the basement, September 1943.
No, I’m not kidding. A FLASH-FORWARD. Two years before Lost made flash-forwards a thing! I mean, I never watched Lost, but even I know about them only from there. Did they steal the idea from this book?
And you know how I said before this book is obviously made to be re-read? Well, now I’m not even sure it was meant to be read the first time around at all. I mean, we’re getting a glimpse 3 years into the future. It’s hard to imagine how much would have happened to change the plot by then. And yet we don’t get much indication of these changes. We learn only 6 things about where we’ll be in September 1943:
- Liesel will still be alive at 14 years old, and in fairly good health, “bony but strong“.
- Hans will also still be alive, seemingly in good health. He will still have his accordion.
- Nothing will have happened to separate Hans and Liesel. I’m so happy to know this.
- Liesel will not get a reply to her letter or hear back from her mother at all in 1940.
- Liesel has a book to write in at this point.
- Other than that, nothing. We are told Liesel “has seen many things“, but the only other hint of things to come is the line “He scratches his leg, where the plaster used to be.” Does this mean Hans got plaster in his leg or is it a hint that they’re in a different basement than the Hubermann household’s? Because all we know about their location is that they’re in a basement.
Something we forget about books is they’re often written out of chronological order, just as movies are filmed out of chronological order. I have never read any book that so blatantly showed that as this one. In fact, it’s the only book that made me feel I’m reading it out of chronological order! If I wasn’t doing this book for the blog, I would be sorely tempted to skip 200 or 300 pages ahead and finish the book from there, or start reading the book backwards, just to see if it would make as much sense.
What’s interesting is that this is about the time (nearly 4 years after early November 1939) Death mentioned Rudy confessing to Liesel that he was worried about her “kicking him in the eggs” like she did to Ludwig Schmeikl. One thing I haven’t acknowledged is that flash-forwards and hinting at things to come really are neat gimmicks that most authors won’t dare use. (Though a cliche in television. Mad Men’s “Seven Twenty Three” is one of the only uses there that felt like an actual form of artistic expression.) So it’ll be very fun to see Zusak take us to these points and get context and satisfaction at having reached there.
For now, we don’t even need the flashback, because it just goes back to Hans sympathizing with Liesel in the present (if you can call it that) when she didn’t receive any reply.
In hindsight, she saw that the whole exercise had been pointless. Had her mother been in a position to do so, she would have already made contact with the foster care people, or directly with the girl, or the Hubermanns. But there had been nothing.
And what happened to her? Liesel isn’t a Jew, she’s a Lutheran like my late great-grandfather going on 30 in America, so why is her mother in trouble? Her father was apparently a Communist so perhaps his mother has vanished for the same reasons as him. So will this tie to Communism then make up the base of the conflict for Liesel as the war goes on?
Zusak/Death have made it clear how horrible it is for her, not knowing or understanding anything even at the levels we know and can insinuate. And it only gets worse:
To lend insult to injury, in mid-February, Liesel was given a letter from another ironing customer, the Pfaffelhürvers, from Heide Strasse. The pair of them stood with great tallness in the doorway, giving her a melancholic regard. “For your mama,” the man said, handing her the envelope. “Tell her we’re sorry. Tell her we’re sorry.”
And again there was no build-up for this as Rosa’s only real complaint against them was that they inspected the returned laundry carefully in front of her. Also, Liesel has written FIVE LETTERS. The heartbreak just gets worse!
Having shown a shot of 14-year-old Liesel, Zusak now speeds up the narrative to Liesel’s 11th birthday in presumably March of 1940. (I thought this created a chronology mistake in terms of Liesel’s age, but no, Zusak obviously edited this book well.) She gets no present because Hans spent that money on the books for Christmas. Misery from apparent happiness, indeed!
She simply swallowed the disappointment and decided on one calculated risk – a present from herself. She would gather all of the accrued letters to her mother, stuff them into one envelope, and use just a tiny portion of the washing and ironing money to mail it. Then, of course, she would take the Watschen, most likely in the kitchen, and she would not make a sound.
Good God, I want to reach through the book and stop this poor girl from doing this to herself! Something good does come out of it, though, in terms of the insight she receives once she’s sent the letters and admitted it to Rosa, who responds amicably by savagely beating her with a wooden spoon:
What came to her then was the dustiness of the floor, the feeling that her clothes were more next to her than on her, and the sudden realization that this would all be for nothing – that her mother would never write back and she would never see her again. The reality of this gave her a second Watschen. It stung her, and it did not stop for many minutes.
It really is amazing how vivid Zusak’s writing is. He conveys every iota of Liesel’s emotion and makes the reader feel in her place, desperate scared and alone, sprawled out on the floor for almost an hour, so miserable that Rosa even apologizes to her. I can relate to that. There are times when you’re so depressed and horrified you just have to curl up and hide in your own separate world, where no one can hurt you except your own mind, for there is nothing to do but ponder, ponder the hopelessness in an empty void.
In the way, there is an effect of watching a movie play out in front of us, actually, as we now hear Death’s narration coming in to give a scholarly analysis of the situation, with the perspective of time.
Liesel found some interesting food for thought, in reflecting on that time:
No matter how many times she tried to imagine that scene with the yellow light that she knew had been there, she had to struggle to visualize it. She was beaten in the dark, and she had remained there, on a cold, dark kitchen floor. Even Papa’s music was the color of darkness.
Even Papa’s music.
The strange thing was that she was vaguely comforted by that thought, rather than distressed by it.
The dark, the light.
What was the difference?
This is obviously a very meaningful passage. I suppose the idea is the fact that many children, and even some adults harbor a fear of the dark. I know I did for many years as a child, to the point I would make my mother leave the light on in the bathroom. I grew out of that, though, and I never understood why. You could say it was because I matured. But nowadays, I actually like the dark, due to the effect and eerie mood it creates. I’m writing this in the dark late into the wee hours of the morning, with no light but the computer monitor in front of me. And I don’t feel any safer than if the light were on. At any moment I can close my eyes tightly shut, and there is no change in my surroundings.
Because I have grown up, and seen the world the way it is. There’s no one who’s going to hurt me in the dark, and there’s no one who’s going to hurt me in the light. But if there was they could do it in the light just as easily as in the dark. Misery has come to Liesel out of happiness, and misery of her brother’s death came to Liesel out of the misery of having to say goodbye to her mother. Liesel has reached that coming-of-age moment, too. She’s 11, and this is the time encapsulated well in “Where the Wild Things Are”, when the world seems more complex and confusing, when you are not yet grown, not yet a teen, but well on your way and not quite a child anymore, either.
Nightmares had reinforced themselves in each, as the book thief began to truly understand how things were and how they would always be. If nothing else, she could prepare herself. Perhaps that’s why on the Führer‘s birthday, when the answer to the question of her mother’s suffering showed itself completely, she was able to react, despite her perplexity and her rage.
Liesel Meminger was ready.
Happy birthday, Herr Hitler.
Many happy returns.
I’m sorry if I don’t always act like it, but I really am just in love with the prose of this book. It’s bewitching, and in my first reading of the end of this chapter it simply captivated me, weaving me into a daze right to the finish. Re-reading it here, I find I could probably read it many more times and never get tired of it.
I saw my mother recently before I started working on this post or reading Part Two, and we had a long conversation about books and movies. Unfortunately she liked Water for Elephants a lot (though did thankfully acknowledge the ending to be “sentimental claptrap”), and found The Secret Garden such a slog she has no real memory of it, but we can agree on The Book Thief. I can’t post her reactions like I did for my aunt, because we didn’t actually read or discuss any of the book despite the fact that it was sitting right in front of us the whole time we talked.
But she said that she did like it. She mentioned how undeserving Stephen King is of the scorn he often receives, Misery being so vivid and descriptive she found herself admitting to a friend who wanted to know if she’d seen the movie (then in theaters) that she really didn’t know. I asked if she felt The Book Thief was one of those books with such vivid writing that puts you in the scene, and she after a moment’s thought, nodded her head and said “Yes I’d have to say it was.”
And I have to agree. It really is fantastic writing, and I like how Zusak is telling us this story from a definite future perspective, and yet we still are very involved in the action as he parcels it out, plays with our emotions, and teases what’s to come. Also… we’re going to find out what happened to Liesel’s mother! I’m glad he spoiled that bit of information!
I mean, sure, it’ll be horrible, but still…………
A funny story: My mom doesn’t read book titles on her Kindle or any information about a book because she likes to be completely surprised. Consequently she had actually started another book whose name she didn’t remember, and believed it was The Book Thief, so she was talking to my sister about it in great detail, and said she didn’t know why it was called The Book Thief because well, no book thievery had come up. Then when she realized the mistake, she stopped to ask why her daughter, who had read the book herself, hadn’t explained to her she had the wrong book when she went on and on about things that had never happened. “You never listen to me at all, do you! Just in one ear and out the other!”
(I will note she also loves Pride and Prejudice, it’s one of her favorite books, and apparently one of my brother’s, too. So apologies to any Australians named Daniel for bringing up people with such bad taste. She hasn’t read Gatsby.)
kirksbooks 