The Book Thief Courage Theme

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A girl, some books, Nazi Germany, and the power of love come together in the charmingly grim tale that unfolds in the novel, “The Book Thief”. Without the three main themes of the book, courage, literature, and love, there would be no book thief. The braveness it took to steal the books she loved so dearly was the core of the story that all started that fateful day of her brother’s death when she snatched her first book from the snow. [insert thesis statement here]

Courage is a crucial theme as it enables the characters to do things that, without courage, would be impossible. After Liesel was skipped over in class when all of the other kids got to read, with the help of her ever-so-fearless pal Rudy, she got up in front of the class …show more content…
When the option of having books given to her as gifts was not available, she stole books both for the thrill of it and to obtain another book to distract her from the suffering of the wartime. She even spread the comfort it brought to others during an air raid that was supposedly going to hit Molching by reading “The Whistler” and calming the nervous and chaotic crowd in the basement so much that “By page three, everyone was silent but Liesel.”(Zusak 381) Also, Max’s gifts to Liesel were in the form of illustrated books about Hitler and Standover Men and the Word Shaker. These were almost therapeutic to him as well as enlightenment for Liesel about his perspective of things going on and his views of Liesel. In the Word Shaker, it tells a story about how a man (Hitler) uses words to his advantage to strike up fear and hatred in the mesmerized population. It then speaks about a girl who had a seed bearing the word “friendship” which she watered everyday. It grew to be the tallest tree, and when the Führer himself came and ordered it to be chopped down, she climbed up the tree all the way up to the highest branches. The Führer hacked and hacked, but the tree was so strong that “A hundred and ninety-six soldiers could not make any impact on the word shaker’s tree.”(Zusak 447) This example of literature written by a Jew hidden in the Hubermann’s basement demonstrates not only the power of …show more content…
A quote from the book which stood out for me was the last line of “The Book Thief”(the one Liesel wrote) which is “I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”(Zusak 528) This sums the book up in one sentence for me because it says that she has hated words, possibly referring the reading in front of the class incident or Hitler’s use of words for power, and also she has loved them, meaning that it has helped her through rough times and couldn’t get enough of them at times, especially when painting the words in the basement with Papa. I personally loved the style of writing the author used because he didn’t sugarcoat anything, but the prospect of Death himself narrating and actually feeling bad for the people he claims was what was so original and intriguing about this book. I felt that the minimalness of gratuitous violence and more of just a dark and glum sense to the book was what was also good about the book because it left that part up to our imagination. Overall, this is one of the best books I have read in a long time and will forever live in my
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