Imagery

            The author uses incredible imagery in The Book Thief. One example is when Liesel is going around with her dad on his painting jobs. It talks about how they would eat a little bread with whatever jam or meat they had left, and then he would play his accordion.

      “Traces of bread crumbs were in the creases of his
      overalls. Paint-speckled hands made their way across
      the buttons and raked over the keys, or held on to a
      note for a while. His arms worked the bellows, giving
      the instrument the air it needed to breathe.” (Zusak 355) 

This attention to little details, like the bread crumbs on his overalls that really didn’t have much to do with what was going on, somehow adds so much depth. It’s like he turned the moment into a photograph that has more in it the more you look. Writing down those little details captures the moment and makes it so incredibly realistic it’s as though it happened to you, which is the goal of imagery. Marcus Zusak doesn’t paint pictures in the readers’ minds, he describes a moment in so much detail that it’s more real life than painting. But it’s not that he tells every detail- only the important ones. The ones Liesel would notice. We know nothing about the temperature of the air or what color the accordion is because those details really wouldn’t add to the depth of the scene. The few choice details he included are the perfect ones to enrich the feeling of the moment. He also personifies the accordion, giving it the human quality of needing to breathe. That adds to the description in a way that “His arms worked the bellows, drawing in air and pushing it out” just wouldn’t have. The fact that an accordion can’t really breathe but is described as being able to adds a surreal edge. It enhances the golden, nostalgic feeling of the scene.  Zusak’s use of imagery is incredible, not only in this scene, but throughout the entire book.

 (Click here to see more art from this art fair)

This image really reminds me of the imagery used in that particular scene. While it has a different mood, it reveals the same idea. This image, having been taken on the ride, focuses on one perspective. It limits the amount of details the viewer has. We can’t see the center column of the ride, the ground, or the rest of the theme park because those aren’t necessary. All we see are the seats in front of us. That shows that that’s what we’re focusing on: the seats and the sky. The way it’s blurred and how the colors have been edited gives it a surreal edge; it has the same effect as the use of personification in the passage. Overall, the dreamy, reminiscent feeling is present in both this picture and the passage because of the way they are presented, with the right details and techniques to make the audience experience the feeling they’d get if they were really in that moment.

Theme- Romeo and Juliet Connection

            Though there are many themes in this book, one in particular stood out to me because it is similar to one revealed in Romeo and Juliet, which I am reading in English class. After stealing the basket of food from Otto Sturm and sharing it with the other thieves, Rudy and Liesel are walking to the Strums’ to return the basket. Death remarks that later on, though Rudy smiles now at his success at the expense of Otto, “In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer−proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water” (Zusak 164). He is commenting on the fact that humans consist of both good and bad qualities and that everyone is a contradiction of himself or herself because no one is truly good or bad. Most people are good sometimes and bad sometimes, because both reside inside of them. The “just add water” means that all you have to do is add a certain circumstance or put the person in a certain situation for one to come out over the other. In Friar Laurence’s soliloquy in Romeo and Juliet, the Friar says something similar. When talking about plants and herbs, he says, “Within the infant rind of this weak flower / Poison hath residence and medicine power” (II.iii.23-24) meaning that both good and bad can reside in one thing, even something as simple as a flower. He is using this as a metaphor for all things−we as humans tend to want to label things “good” or “bad” and not budge from our opinion. But what Shakespeare is trying to suggest is that all things have good and bad in them. There might be more of one than the other, but no one is truly entirely evil or purely good. Each person contains both, either showing depending on the circumstances. Both stories are saying that sometimes a person may act good in some situations and bad in others because everyone has both good and bad inside of them. I found it fascinating that both of the pieces of literature I was reading included this theme.

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.