Death's Interjections

            Every once in a while, instead of simply writing something, Zusak will use a strange sort of interjection to emphasize an important observation, give an image, or define a word. For example, when describing how Liesel wakes up in the middle of the night from nightmares and her papa will stay with her, he writes:

“* * * A DEFINITION NOT FOUND * * *

IN THE DICTIONARY

Not leaving: an act of trust and love,

often deciphered by children”

It is a very unique and clever way to clue the audience in on something. Rather than just explaining how children are comforted when someone stays, in this case Hans Hubermann staying with her while she recovered from a nightmare, he writes it in bold letters in the middle of the page. This allows him to frankly point something out, perhaps with incomplete sentences or some other format not used in regular paragraphs. It also draws attention to it. By not simply defining it in a paragraph, he tells the reader that this piece of information is either significant to the plot or theme, or just an important observation worth their attention. This formatting is a clever way to draw attention to definitions, thoughts, and descriptions in the book.

            Some YouTubers do a similar thing in their videos called jump cuts. They’ll be talking to the camera in one position, abruptly cut to a shot of them in a different, usually closer, position to say something, then cut back to the original position; they might also simply use abrupt cuts between topics or sentences. The “vlogbrothers,” John and Hank Green, are masters of this technique and use it a lot, such as in this video: "Do Businesses Need to Suck?". The reason that jump cuts remind me of Death’s interjections is that jump cuts are often used as an aside to the audience, as though there would be parentheses around their words if they’d been written down. The same is true of Zusak’s technique: it’s as though he doesn’t want to have to go off explaining some piece of information which would interrupt the storytelling, so he puts it in as an aside to the audience. It’s as though he’s either saying, “You should realize this for what’s coming up,” or, “You should have realized this from what just happened.” While the two techniques aren’t used in exactly the same way, the feel of the interjection is present in both and are both effective methods of cleverly.