The Book Thief

“Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father’s eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Liesel, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot.” 

Liesel’s description is synesthetic. She equates the emotion of kindness with the color silver. Silver is a precious metal, so the comparison is apt, given Hans’s value as a human being. Liesel’s perception parallels Death’s tendency to describe the souls he captures in terms of colors of the day. 

“The point is, it didn’t really matter what that book was about. It was what it meant that was more important.” 

When Liesel steals her first book, she can’t even read yet. The subject matter is also not relevant to her life. As Death suggests, Liesel doesn’t judge books for their content. She gravitates to them because of their emotional associations with events in her life. 

“She was the book thief without the words. Trust me, though, the words were on their way, and when they arrived, Liesel would hold them in her hands like the clouds, and she would wring them out like the rain.” 

Death foreshadows Liesel’s future as a word shaker even though she has yet to master reading. His visual description depicts her in godlike proportions that give her mastery over the elemental words that still elude her. That her words will eventually become powerful enough to capture the attention of Death himself is proof of that fact. 

“I guess humans like to watch a little destruction. Sand castles, houses of cards, that’s where they begin. Their great skill is their capacity to escalate.” 

Death is offering a mordant observation about human behavior. In this specific instance, he’s describing Liesel’s fascination with the book burning that she abhors. In reality, he’s offering a commentary on the bigger conflagration that is World War II. He can’t understand the human taste for destruction escalated to such an absurd degree.

“Smoke was rising out of Liesel’s collar. A necklace of sweat had formed around her throat. Beneath her shirt, a book was eating her up.” 

Liesel has just plucked a smoldering book from the ashes of the bonfire. The gesture demonstrates her intense fascination with the written word. The heat of the book also parallels the fire for words that already exists in Liesel’s heart. 

“The point is, Ilsa Hermann had decided to make suffering her triumph. When it refused to let go of her, she succumbed to it. She embraced it.” 

After Ilsa loses her son to war, she decided to share his frozen fate. Much later in the book, she will learn a valuable lesson about the pointlessness of masochism. When she sees Liesel about to destroy her connection to words, she advises the girl to learn from the older woman’s mistakes. 

“Life had altered in the wildest possible way, but it was imperative that they act as if nothing at all had happened. Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew.”

For the Hubermanns, the hardest part of hiding Max in their basement is pretending that he isn’t there at all. Concealing his physical presence is relatively easy. Concealing their own emotional distress from the outside world at the enormity of their crime is much harder. 

“Where Hans Hubermann and Erik Vandenburg were ultimately united by music, Max and Liesel were held together by the quiet gathering of words.” 

While Max and Liesel share a common interest in books, their bond is not articulated using words. Rather, they sit silently together as one works a crossword puzzle, and the other reads a book. Their silent communication offers another paradox for Death to ponder. 

“Before they went into their respective homes, Rudy stopped a moment and said, […] ‘Good night, book thief.’ It was the first time Liesel had been branded with her title, and she couldn’t hide the fact that she liked it very much.” 

Liesel’s first book theft is an instinctual act. She herself isn’t sure why she wants to steal words to maintain her link with her family. By this point in the book, she has become a word master and takes books because she feels she has a right to them. She owns her title without a trace of embarrassment. 

“Rudy Steiner was scared of the book thief’s kiss. He must have longed for it so much. He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.” 

After Rudy retrieves Liesel’s sodden book from the river, he has every right to expect a kiss as his reward. Death’s foreshadowing of the end of his romance lends a note of poignancy to this moment. Liesel doesn’t know that she’s running out of time to show Rudy how she feels about him. 

“To me, war is like the new boss who expects the impossible. He stands over your shoulder repeating one thing, incessantly: ‘Get it done, get it done.’ So you work harder. You get the job done. The boss, however, does not thank you. He asks for more.” 

Death can stand outside the experience of war and observe it with detachment because he is immortal. Although he is impervious to harm, he chooses to view himself as a harried assembly line worker who can’t meet production quotas. The image is both humorous and appalling when one considers the number of souls lost through mechanized warfare. 

“Summer came. For the book thief, everything was going nicely. For me, the sky was the color of Jews.” 

Death has already explained his tendency to see individual deaths in terms of colors. His statement conveys the magnitude of destruction with which he’s forced to cope. The entire sky only contains one color, and it represents the simultaneous deaths of millions. 

“Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. ‘There were stars,’ he said. ‘They burned my eyes.’” 

On a night when everyone else is in the local air-raid shelter, Max takes the opportunity to peek out the window. The sight of the stars is too intense for his gaze. This simple statement reveals how long the man has been forced to survive in darkness. His words become a revelation to the Hubermanns of how lucky they are to breathe fresh air and see the sky. 

“She didn’t dare to look up, but she could feel their frightened eyes hanging on to her as she hauled the words in and breathed them out. A voice played the notes inside her. This, it said, is your accordion.” 

Liesel reads to the terrified occupants of the bomb shelter to calm them. She has already discovered the power that words have to move her and the link they have forged between her and Max. She is now beginning to understand their healing power for an entire community. 

“The suffering faces of depleted men and women reached across to them, pleading not so much for help—they were beyond that—but for an explanation. Just something to subdue this confusion.” 

Hans watches the Jews being marched through town. Because Hitler has decided to scapegoat Jews, he heaps all the ills afflicting Germany upon their shoulders: Get rid of the Jews, and Germany’s problems will disappear. The lunacy of such simplistic thinking appears in the eyes of the prisoners. There can be no adequate explanation for such insane logic. 

“His first plan of attack was to plant the words in as many areas of his homeland as possible. He planted them day and night, and cultivated them. He watched them grow, until eventually, great forests of words had risen throughout Germany […] It was a nation of farmed thoughts.” 

Max’s fairy tale describes Hitler’s tactic for disseminating propaganda. Germany has traditionally been a nation of farmers, so the metaphor is an apt one. It is also apt in the sense that farmed thoughts are mass-produced. Those who reap them don’t question their value or their source. 

“One such word shaker was a small, skinny girl. She was renowned as the best word shaker of her region because she knew how powerless a person could be WITHOUT words.” 

This quote comes from Max’s story about Liesel. At the beginning of the novel, she doesn’t know how to read and has no outlet for self-expression. It costs her a struggle to acquire reading skills, but she perseveres. Her instinctive attraction to words is articulated in this passage. Words equal power. 

“She didn’t know why it was so important, but she enjoyed the fact that the roomful of books belonged to the woman. It was she who introduced her to the library in the first place and gave her the initial, even literal, window of opportunity. This way was better. It all seemed to fit.” 

Liesel has always assumed that the Hermann library belongs to the mayor rather than his wife. This quote builds on the preceding one. If words equal power, it is fitting that women should share in that power rather than being excluded from it. 

“And the girl goes on reading, for that’s why she’s there, and it feels good to be good for something in the aftermath of the snows of Stalingrad.”

Right after Frau Holtzapfel learns of the death of her son, Liesel goes to read to her. The words have a healing effect even though the old woman is too grief-stricken to hear them. Death is reliving the horrors of Stalingrad at the same time, so Liesel’s words are therapeutic for him as well. His reaction helps to explain why he later fixates on Liesel’s autobiography. 

“But again, it was Rudy who answered, before Liesel could even open her mouth. ‘It feels good, doesn’t it? To steal something back.’” 

Rudy convinces Liesel to accompany him on a burglary. In articulating his reasoning for the theft, he also offers an alternative explanation for Liesel’s book thefts. At the beginning of the story, everything in the girl’s life has been taken away from her. Aside from her attraction to the power of words, stealing her first book is a gesture of defiance against the powers that rule the world, which have deprived her of her family. 

“They had too many ways, they were too resourceful—and when they did it too well, whatever their chosen method, I was in no position to refuse. Michael Holtzapfel knew what he was doing. He killed himself for wanting to live.”

Death is bemoaning his inability to prevent suicides. At the same time, he is describing yet another aspect of the human paradox. Michael feels guilty because he survived Stalingrad, while his brother died there. Perversely, wanting to live is grounds for seeking death. 

“‘Don’t punish yourself,’ she heard her say again, but there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.” 

Liesel is thinking about Ilsa’s admonition that the girl shouldn’t punish herself by giving up her beloved words. This passage articulates yet another aspect of the human paradox. In writing her life story, Liesel will be required to dredge up as much misery as joy. Words are a double-edged sword. 

“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.” 

This is the concluding sentence of the book Liesel has written. The quote amplifies the one before in its recognition that words can harm as much as they can heal. Hitler’s words of hate are responsible for killing millions. Liesel’s words will ultimately save her life during the bombing of Himmel Street.