He tells us at the beginning of the novel that the most painful part of his job is seeing "he survivors," "the leftover humans," "the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprise" (1.20, 1.21, 1.22). (Tough break, Death.) In the end, he's still the being that comes to separate our souls from our bodies, Death's final line, "I'm haunted by humans" (88.17), shows that he'll always be separate from us. On the other hand, though Death has lots of human qualities, he'll never be totally human. This quest for meaning seems like a very human thing indeed. In other words, he looks for hope in the gathering, reading, and telling of stories. He retells these stories, he says, "to prove to myself that you, and your human existence, are worth it" (4.33). Liesel is particularly interesting to him because of her courage and her personality. One of the main things he does is collect stories of courageous humans. Like many humans, Death tries to find ways to give meaning to his work. He might not even have had a coffee break.Īnd, let's face it, his job is about as depressing as it gets. To help distract him from his sad and never-ending work, he often fixates on the color of the sky at the time of each human death. It seems like the poor guy hasn't had a vacation since he started working. We see him experience both sadness and joy in the novel. For another, Death is in some ways pretty human-especially considering how inhumane a lot of the homo sapiens running around in The Book Thief are.įor example, Death has real feelings. For one thing, Death ain't the bad guy (that would be Hitler).
But don't go cowering under the covers on his account. (Click the character infographic to download.) Death And Humanityĭeath is our guide and narrator to The Book Thief.
0 kommentar(er)
