As of Right Now...
I've just read about a fourth of the book and read about Liesel's worries of stealing books in Germany, during WW2. Apparently, Liesel has been stealing too many books and is afraid that the mayor's wife would notice, especially when she delivers clean clothes to the mayor's wife. However, she attempts to steer clear from this issue by telling her foster mother that the mayor's wife wasn't home, which the foster mother told Liesel to go try again. This time, however, Liesel arrives to the mayor's wife, holding a tower of books and invites Liesel to her library. This is similar to many situations I encountered in my life, all of which, happened at school. It's not uncommon to hear a telephone call from the teacher's desk, but if you are a 10 year old child who has just stole an eraser, when the teacher asks you to go to the principal's office, you will be scared. After my 10 year old self had walked out of a classroom shouting "OOooooooo", I arrive to the principal's office to find a welcoming congratulations for being student of the month. It's easy to tell from both stories that the surface of an issue is not the basis of it.
Text to Text Connection
"Book Thief" doesn't spark a distinct book, but rather a combination of them. Of course, the "City of Thieves" is a very strong one; starting with "City of Thieves" is because both books take place in the same time period and the struggle is not the same for either books. While the two teenage boys in "City of Thieves" struggle for survival in war, Liesel in "Book Thief" is starving for a good read, she desires books and is struggling to find her identity and direction in life from books. While the struggle is different, the setting is the same, it is cold, people are starving, and life, in general, is tough.
Text to World Connection
As technologically advanced we are now, much of society is controlled by words, and that's what Markus Zusak wanted to demonstrate in his book, "Book Thief". He wanted to show how Hitler could use words to control others while demonstrating that words could be used in a better way. In his book, Liesel arrives to her foster home illiterate, she is laughed at in school and doesn't understand much of her classes. Until she starts learning at midnight classes with her foster dad, Hans Hubermann, she begins to unravel a new world, Markus uses books to show how Liesel's life made a turning point from dark to light because of books and the powerful sanctuary it provided people. And as Kurt Vonnegut believed, books are very real, no matter how fictional the story, the message is more concrete than stone.
http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html
Above is a link to Kurt Vonnegut's letter to a school district demonstrating how "real" he is.
I was wondering do you think i would like this book? and also i liked how you used all the text-to's instead of others that do 1 and dont even explain their reasoning!
ReplyDeleteHaha, yeah I've seen some of those before, I haven't dug too deep into the book yet, I'll keep you updated.
DeleteThat is cool how you found multiple connections to the text
ReplyDeleteI bet there are more
DeleteI like how you made text to text and text to world connections.
ReplyDeleteHaha, thanks.
DeleteI know that many people have read this book, but you managed to find some connections that I would never have thought of. For example, I thought that the connection to Kurt Vonnegut was interesting and creative. It shows that you can look at one book and see it many different ways. When I read this book, I liked the historical context but I found the narrator slightly annoying. What is your opinion on the narrator?
ReplyDeleteI thought the free running narrator didn't quite fit in with the strict setting of Nazi Germany at the time, but I guess it was Zusak's way to lessen the tension of the book.
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