The Book Thief in Depth

So I know that our presentation on The Book Thief was really lacking in information on purpose because we really didn't want to give anything away. It would spoil a great book. Here, however, I'll provide a slightly more in depth summary of the plot for those of you who are interested but would like to learn more before reading the book.

The Book Thief, as we said, follows the life of a young girl, Liesel Meminger, who grows up in Nazi Germany. I believe the book takes place between ages 8 and 15 for Liesel. She is sent to a foster family to get a second chance because her mother was a Communist. Being a Communist was frowned upon almost as much as being a Jew in Nazi Germany. So Liesel is sent to the Hubermanns to be taken care of, Hans and Rosa. She quickly grows used to her new home and makes lots of friends, including her best friend, Rudy Steiner.

As the book progresses, we learn more about how Hans is not a member of the Nazi party and does not support their agenda. He does, however, apply for membership to help his business (he paints houses for a living, and most people will not let him paint their houses if he is not a member). Liesel soon discovers that while it's perfectly OK to act one way at home, that way of life must remain totally separate from the outside world.

Eventually, a new person enters into the life of the Hubermanns: Max Vandenburg. Max is a Jew and the son of a war companion of Hans. This war companion, Erik Vandenburg, saved Hans' life, and Hans offered to repay his friend's wife by offering to help her anytime she needed it. 20 years later, her son, Max, is sent to live with the Hubermanns to escape the terror of the Nazis. Liesel forms a close friendship with this man, and they spend long periods of time talking to each other, about their histories and the nightmares they both experience on a nightly basis.

In the meantime, Liesel also forms a friendship with the mayor's wife, Ilsa Hermann, who caught Liesel stealing a book from a book burning. Ilsa understands Liesel's love for reading, and invites her to read anytime she is in the neighborhood.

Later, Hans is caught giving bread to a Jew while a procession is going through Munich Street, the main street running through Molching, where the Hubermanns live. Hans realizes that he has committed a grave error in the eyes of the law, and he is forced to send Max away. But the Nazis never come to search the house for a Jew. Instead, they grant him membership into the Nazi party, whereupon they send him off to war. He is put into a special unit called the LSE, which is really a unit for cleaning up the towns after air raids, but has earned itself a nickname which is translated from German to mean "Dead Body Collectors." This is the experience that brings the war closer to the story than ever before.

And that's where I'll stop. It'll give a good point for a cliffhanger in case you ever decide to read the book.

Persepolis Reflection

It was really interesting reading about a different culture. As we saw with the Daily Show clips, Americans on the whole are largely uneducated when it comes to world affairs or other countries such as Iran. It was refreshing to get to learn more about that portion of the world, and I hope that everyone relished the opportunity as much as I did.

It was also a good experience to read a graphic novel. With some of the other novels, like Jane Eyre, it was a little harder for me to notice the growing up part of it simply because it was just described: there was no visual representation. In a graphic novel, it's easier to see, and it even makes it easier to notice how the remarks of the characters become more mature as they grow up because all speech is broken apart from the other words instead of mashed together into lines. The very organization of it made it easier to take it all in.

I did really like this reading experience, partly for the reasons above, but also because I still like to be able to see what I'm reading. I don't necessarily always build pictures of what's going on in a novel in my head (sometimes I just find it too difficult, so I just let myself be immersed in the reading. Forget about critical analysis), so having someone to do it for me took that out of the equation. Obviously, I wouldn't welcome this all the time, since it would take the fun out of every book if it happened every time, but it was a nice change.

I definitely recommend keeping Persepolis in the curriculum. I might even suggest making the whole book a part of the curriculum, if possible. I don't know about everyone else, but I finished reading it, and even though I could see how some people might not like it, it is a reading experience that I truly believe everyone should have.

The Transitory State

For the past week, we've been talking about how there are some certain requirements or rites of passage to move out of childhood and into adulthood. In general, we've identified that there is more to becoming an adult in our society than just meeting one goal and moving on into manhood/womanhood. I ask this, then: what becomes of the transitory state?

This transitory state is usually called adolescence. We may have touched on it briefly at some point during our discussions (it's not coming to me at the moment), but most of what I've heard involve the difference between the innocence of childhood straight into the responsibilities of adulthood. Adolescence falls somewhere in the middle, but how do we define it? Is it that there are some responsibilities available to us that were not available as children, yet we retain some of that innocent spirit? And if this is how it is, are responsibilities apportioned differently amongst those in this transitory state? Would this make it more difficult to define, or does it seem like this muddied line would be easy to see since there would be a clear mixture of childhood and adulthood for the most part?

Reactions to Jane Eyre

Oh, man, where to begin? Quite a book, that Jane Eyre was. I'll be the first to admit, I didn't like the book at first. It took a while to develop, and I'm the kind of guy that doesn't really get into a book until it really takes off.

The book was a good one, but to be honest, if the unit is about coming of age, I really didn't think that Jane Eyre fit with the unit very well. Sure, she does grow up and change as the story moves along, and maybe it's just me, but as I read the book, I wasn't really instilled with this sense of coming of age. That would really only come afterward in the loosest sense, and only sometimes, when we discussed the book as a class. If the meaning was about coming of age, I got totally lost in what I was reading about and didn't see anything about that.

Perhaps this book just shouldn't be taught in the class. Again, maybe it's just me, but I didn't really get much out of the book other than "Well, I guess it was a good book." That and its being almost too much of a read for us to get through...I think the class would be better off choosing a different book. It was, however, the kind of book I might suggest for an independent reading. I know I sound like a broken record when I say I'm not sure about the theme of the class as a whole, or if all the independent readings connect to a larger idea, but if those books don't exactly have anything in common, Jane Eyre would be a good one to add to the independent reading list.

One other thing. About the ending. I didn't mind it, really, except for the little bit about Jane and Rochester hearing each other's voices. The ending would have been perfectly fine without that little tidbit, and it seemed to be just a little bit too much. Jane was going to find out what happened to Rochester anyway, so it's not as if she needed that little extra "Jane, Jane, Jane!" to get her going. It struck me almost like a bit of a deus ex machina, and personally, I think Charlotte Bronte wrote Jane Eyre at a level that should have been above such trivialities. But I digress.

A Martian's Point of View

Even if you've never read the book, seen the movie, or heard the radio broadcast, you've likely heard of The War of the Worlds. It's told from the perspective of one man who survives the apocalypse of martian attack, and though he is by no means the only one, most people that he meets are killed by the martians at some point or another. The problem is that the point of view tells us that the martians are bloodthirsty demons with no principles. Yet how are we to know that's true? As the reader, we are left with little to no actual evidence of the reasoning behind believing that the martians are evil apart from the fact that they try to eliminate the human race, which, I might add, is one thing we could even say about ourselves sometimes.

So get this. How about a War of the Worlds from the point of view of one of the martians? They came to Earth, and though they started the hostilities, they clearly didn't expect any fight back, which was something they got in parts of the book (but to be honest, the martians did most of the dominating). How would the book sound if it were told by a martian? We might get a completely different argument from this, such as the reason why the martians came in the first place. Perhaps they had a legitimate reason for invading the third rock from the sun.

The Many Quirks of Rochester

He has a bit of a comic relief character feel to him, don't you think? If it weren't for the fact that he plays such a vital role in the book both as Jane's new employer as well as the deepest, most secret desire of her heart, I would have cast him as such. But what do we know of him so far? Let's recap.

Rochester has had issues with those who have been close to him in the past, including an apparently wicked brother (and possibly father, though he may have just been helpless) who contrived to steal his inheritance from under him and an unfaithful lover who claims that her child is his: whether or not this is actually true, we are not entirely sure, though most believe the child is his.

He also believes that witchcraft could be afoot. When he meets Jane at Thornfield (after his incident at the stile), he blames his fall on her and her "men in green." Upon reflection, this is likely just a joke on his part, in order that he might not be his own reason for falling, or rather the ice being the reason. Yet some who live at Thornfield suggest that it could be haunted, or at least go so far as to identify the haunt of a ghost were there such a thing at Thornfield, which might lead one to believe that there is such a being in residence at Thornfield.

He even seems to be just a shade bipolar. Intensely telling a story one minute, deep in conversation with his fate the next, his mood swings are unpredictable, and this is not exactly typical of a man rapidly approaching his forties, as we soon learn from Mrs. Fairfax. Fortunately, it seems as though this is a trait that allows for getting used to, so we shall soon see as the story progresses even further. Jane already seems to be prepared for most of his eccentricities, but we have half the book yet to go. Time will tell.

He also dresses as a woman. Just saying.

The Ending of Ghost World

This was something we already touched on in class, but I was hoping to have a bit more of a discussion about it, maybe get more explanations as to why some people thought the ending represented what it did. I believe I've already stated my opinion, but just in case I'll put it out there again: I think that the ending of the movie was about Enid's realization of her dream with her departure to somewhere random, just like she had told Seymour was her deepest darkest fantasy.

Others have said that the ending is more of a representation of death. Norman, who normally sat at the bus stop, was a really old guy, so it wouldn't be so far-fetched to believe that he would die. It might be a bit of a stretch saying that Enid killed herself, because there really wasn't an obvious indication that that would be the case, but we can't exactly rule it out entirely, either. She was dealing with a lot by the end of the film, so it's possible that she could have killed herself.

These two views were the ones I heard the most of in class (one, of course, being my own), so I hope we can prompt a little more discussion about this. Has anyone else a different opinion of the ending? Or do you have a reason why you might stand behind one interpretation over the other?