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?