Max & Liesel

Max gives Liesel a book that he wrote himself as a birthday gift.  The significance of the story is how Max and Liesel becomes friends.  He tells how everyone in his life stood over him.  He then tells how one day someone else stood over him, which was Liesel.  "I slept there for a long time. Three days, they told me... and what did I find when I woke up? Not a man, but someone else, standing over me"(Zusak 230). He then realized they had a lot of things in common and how Liesel made him feel better about himself.  So then he tells how it makes him understand that the best standover man he has ever know wasn't a man at all and tells how they ended up becoming friends.  "Now I think we are friends, this girl and me. On her birthday it was she who gave a gift to me"(Zusak 235).

Work Cited:

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

Max Vandenburg

The book that Max Vandenburg is reading on the train is called Mein Kampf.  Max is Jewish and the book is a German book.  He is reading it so people think that since he is reading a German book then he is a German.  "In front of him, he read from the copy of Mein Kampf.  His savior.  Sweat was swimming out of his hands.  Fingermarks clutched the book"(Zusak 157).  On the train Max is feeling scared because he does not want to get caught pretending to be a German.  If he does get caught then the Germans will kill him right there on the spot.  "Papers". That was what he dreaded to hear.  It was bad enough when he was stopped on the platform.  He knew he could not withstand it twice.  The shivering hands.  The smell-no, the stench-of guilt.  He simply couldn't bear it again"(Zusak 159).  I have never convinced others that I am someone that I am not so I wouldn't know how Max felt trying to be a German when he truely is a Jew. 

Work Cited:

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

The Heavyweight Champion

When Sister Maria asked all of the children to get up in front of the classroom to read, she called out everyone except for Liesel because Sister Maria knew that Liesel couldn't read.  Liesel wanted to prove Sister Maria wrong by showing her that she could read. "All the kids were mashed, right before her eyes, and in a moment of brilliance, she imagined herself reading the entire page on faultless, fluency-filled triumph"(Zusak77). When Liesel went to the front of the class she pretended to read by reading off a page she memorized that she had read with her papa.  When Sister Maria tells her to go to the corridor, Ludwig Schmeikl starts making fun of her.  The way Liesel expresses her anger and frustration is by getting in a fight with Ludwig and Tommy Muller. "On her knees, she sucked in the air and listened to the groans beneath her. She watched the whirlpool of faces,

left and right, and she announced, "I'm not stupid."

No one argued"(Zusak79). I have gotten into a situation like Liesel by getting in a fight in the 6th grade because someone made me angry just how Ludwig made Liesel angry.  The way we can learn from our own challenges is by looking at what consequences were made after the situation.  If it was a bad consequence then you probably wont want to be int he same situation again. 

 

Work Cited:

Zusak, Markus. The Book Thief. NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. Print.

"Death"

I think having Death as a narrator does not really make any much of a difference than having a different narrator. He doesn't make himself stick out like any different than a regular narrator. If you were to read this book without reading the prologue, you wouldn't be able to tell that Death is telling the story. Sometimes while I am reading, I forget that he's the one that is narrating, because he doesn't make himself sound any different. The only time he sticks out as a narrator is when he is telling about himself in the prologue and when he tells about Liesel in the beginning. I am sure though maybe throughout the rest of the book, he will make himself stand out as Death. I feel like maybe he will only bring himself out as a character only when he sees Leisel the three times he says he sees her. Other than that he just sounds like a normal narrator telling about Liesel's life. The feelings and emotions i have about Death are that he is just a thing that comes and takes people's souls, he doesn't really care about anything other than taking peoples souls but when it comes to Liesel, for some reason, he's different.

Survival Stories

What really made an impact me was all of the survival stories on how only some people survived and how so much people died, especially the ones that were little kids. I didn't really know much about the holocaust because it never really interested me. After actually reading about it, it really made me think on how people's life was back then, how they were all treated, how their living conditions were, and how rough they all had it. A difficult time in my life was when I first found out I was pregnant. I was just thinking "how am I going to do it without having an education, without having a job or any money. How is this going to impact on my family." But then I realized that I'm strong, and I can do it. Turned out my family wanted to help me out. I don't think that this can relate to the holocaust, because any difficult situation The Jews had, they didn't really have a family to rely on.Tthey had to pretty much rely on themselves. Then again I think it does relate to the holocaust, because some people knew how hard they had it, how hard things were, and what they were going through. They stayed strong and some people survived through it. Basically what I think of a survivor is someone who had it rough in their life and made it through all of it thick and thin.