The Book Thief

So, I want to talk about Death.

He was interesting, especially because Markus Zusak chose Death as the narrator. In the critical reading we read, the writer talked a little bit about authors choosing narrators and point of view for their novels and the stories within them. It's a very important decision, in my opinion, especially with young adult lit, since much of the readers are obviously young and need an interesting and compelling narrator to keep reading on.

Markus Zusak could have gone with Liesal as the sole narrator of The Book Thief. However, I don't think that it would have had as much impact without Death. Of course, Death is omniscient and we, as the readers, can see the thoughts and action of most characters within the novel, which gives it a certain depth that we probably wouldn't get any other way. We get to see those moments with Max and Papa and Rosa that Liesal doesn't get to see, and their characters would have been lost to us without that knowledge of those events surrounding them. The POV is kind of weird in this novel, since the narrator is omniscient but at the same time he references himself as I. It's like an omniscient first person. (Is that even a thing? Or is there a third person POV that allows for the I?)

Using Death is also very fitting in relation to the time period that the novel takes place in. Everyone knows that millions of people died during WWII and the Holocaust. Because death was so prevalent in those times it would only make sense to use Death. It's ironic, in a way, that Death should focus on a living girl who loses most of the people she loves.

The irony Death uses in the novel is hilariously sad. At one point he says, "It kills me sometimes, how people die." I had to put down the book for a moment and absorb the sentence.  But it was phrases like that one that made me love Death as a narrator so much.

Leonardo da Vinci once said, "Our lives are made by the death of others."

I feel like that's accurate, especially for Liesal.