The World Upside Down
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personalization of death, the depiction of ordinary life in extraordinary times,
and the use of drawings to convey themes, emotions, and loss and grief. The
story may be summarized as follows: “Trying to make sense of the horrors of
World War II, Death relates the story of Liesel—a young German girl whose
book-stealing and story-telling talents help sustain her family and the Jewish
man they are hiding, as well as their neighbors” (iv).
Zusak repeatedly uses the literary device of foreshadowing to pull the
reader into the story. Death, the first-person narrator, is intrigued by young
Liesel Meminger and her life in the German town of Molching, on Himmel
Street (ironically, “heaven” street), between 1939 and 1943. After a devastating
bombing of Himmel Street in 1943, Liesel emerges from her basement refuge
where she has been writing her own life story, entitled The Book Thief. She loses
her book manuscript in the rubble. Death retrieves her book, and as Zusak’s
novel begins, Death decides to share with us Liesel’s story from her own book,
which he has carried with him for many years since the 1943 bombing of
Molching. The organizing plan of Zusak’s novel is to move from book to book
that Liesel steals during her suffering and pain, and to connect each book to her
maturing years from 1939 on.
The first book Liesel steals is The Grave Digger’s Handbook. She is
nine years old, almost ten, in January 1939 when her younger brother dies on the
train taking her and her mother to Munich. Liesel and her brother are to be
placed with foster parents in Molching, for Liesel’s mother and husband are
being persecuted as communists by the Nazis. Her mother and Liesel have to
bury the young boy en route before reaching Munich. At the gravesite, one of
the young grave diggers leaves behind The Grave Digger’s Handbook, the
manual which Liesel takes and prizes in her pain, even though she cannot read
most of the words. Merely having the book helps her cope with the suffering of
her brother’s death. Later on, her foster father Hans Hubermann will discover
this book under Liesel’s mattress and begin to teach her to read the twelve-step
guide to grave-digging success.
According to Death, the meaning of Liesel’s first stolen book is that it
reminds her of the last time she saw her dead brother and her birth mother. Her
sacrifice of these two loved ones is connected with the manual, and the manual
gives her some comfort or solace, even before Hans teaches her how to read at
night when Liesel wakes up from her nightmares. Hans starts with the alphabet.
Liesel is now ten years old, significantly lagging behind her schoolmates in
reading and writing ability. Meanwhile, Molching and Germany in general are
depicted as increasingly coming under Nazi tyranny. This is a state in which the
Jewish people are persecuted mentally, emotionally, and physically every
ordinary day.
For Liesel, learning to read and, eventually, to write means
empowerment. Stealing books allows her to preserve her “self’ during the chaos
of war in Germany. For Christmas, 1939, her foster parents Hans and Rosa give
Liesel two small popular children’s books: Faust the Dog and The Lighthouse.