[Novel] The Power of Words in "The Book Thief"

 

In The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, the power of words is felt throughout the novel.  Narrated by Death, The Book Thief is the story of Liesel Meminger, a nine-year-old German girl who is given up by her mother to live with Hans and Rosa Hubermann in the small town of Molching in 1939, shortly before World War II.  Liesel attends the local school where she is bullied because she cannot read. Hans teaches her to read at night, Liesel quickly understands the power of the written word and falls in love with books.

The novel is set in Germany during World War II, under Hitler’s regime.  Because Liesel Meminger is living in the middle of Hitler’s influence. His words are controlling large groups of people. Germany is at war with people who do not fit the prescribed model of a person. Jewish people are being rounded up and taken to be executed and a young Jewish man comes to live with the Hubermann, Max. During this war that began from words, Liesel learns the power of words in a different way. She learns that words and reading create community and family, and they also have the power to save lives.

Liesel is an orphan. She comes to live with Hans and Rossa Hubermanns and must call them Papa and Mama. She doesn’t bond with them at first. She lost her brother to death and her real mother takes off. But at the site of her brother’s burial she finds a book and hides it under her bed. She has regular nightmares and it is Hans Hubermann, Papa, who comforts her and it is Papa who finds the book. He teaches her to read and it is a nightly custom to read together after her nightmare. He even sells his precious cigarettes to get her books for Christmas. They became a family because of books and words.

Liesel makes friends with the mayor’s wife, who is from a different social class than the Hubermanns. Ilsa Hermann witnessed Liesel’s second theft. Instead of confronting the thief she invited Liesel into her home. Liesel’s reaction was panic, “She is going to take me inside, light the fireplace, and throw me in, books and all”(Zusak 133). Instead she returned many times to read in the afternoon, to memorize words to learn later, and to sit with a lonely woman who had embraced her sorrow. Even after Liesel could no longer go to the house legitimately, Ilsa leaves a dictionary for her and it is Ilsa who takes her in after the bombing. That is an evident of a connection made from words and reading.

Liesel even saves Max using words. When Max is sick, Liesel reads to him and describes her activities to him. She reads entire books to him and even steals another book, just to read it to Max. And it works. He wakes up. Mama even comes to the school to tell her, “you told me to yell at you. You said they’d all believe it…He woke up, Liesel, he’s awake.”From her pocket, she pulled out the toy solider with the scratched exterior. “He said to give you this. It was his favorite” (Zusak 332). She saved a man and brought her mother to school to hug her.

Liesel creates a community in the bomb shelter. She reads during the bombings and everyone feels some comfort because of it, even Frau Holtzapfel and Pfiffikus thanked her for the distraction. It is because of her reading in the shelter that Frau Holtzapfel stops her grudge with the Hubermanns and asks Liesel to read to her in the evenings. They bargain and trade for her to do the job then it stops the animosity between Frau Holtzapel and Rosa Hubermanns.

Adolf Hitler, a man without the qualifications, manipulates his way into being the leader of Germany; “Yes, the Fuhrer decided that he would rule the world with words. ‘I will never fire a gun,’ he devised. ‘I will not have to’” (Zusak 445). Words were what enabled Adolf Hitler to gain power – his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Based on The Holocaust essay Mein Kampf is a book written by Adolf Hitler while he was in prison during 1923-24. In it, he portrays himself, at age 35, as a great intellectual and political figure. His single purpose was to write about his personal greatnesses, and about his plans to take over Germany so he can get rid of the Jews. He takes much credit in Mein Kampf, he doesn’t mention the fact that his parents, Lanz, and others influenced him a lot. He describes all of his ideas about the “Final Solution” to get rid of all the Jews in Germany, and then on to all the Jews in the World. He also talks about the perfect race of Aryans, blond, blue eyed, broad shouldered Germans, and about promoting the spread of anti-Semites all over the world.

The only reason that Adolf Hitler comes to power in Nazi Germany is the genius and power of his words. He never utilizes the brute force of a gun; he simply wields the ability of his words to get what he wants. Hitler’s use of the manipulative power of words is arguably the best in history, rising to power and getting 90% of a country to hate, and want the death of an entire race, from the simple use of speech clearly indicates the immense deceitful power of words.

In celebration of the Fuhrer’s birthday, a large bonfire is held in the middle of Molching to burn Jewish books. The purpose of the bonfire is to destroy the stories and words that oppose the teachings of Adolf Hitler, because he realizes that the power opposing opinions may manipulate the public into thinking differently to what he has told them. Powerful words used for positive actions can have the same massive influence as deceitful ones.

In Max Vandenburg’s novel, The Word Shaker, a young girl (portrayed as Liesel), grows a tree from her words. Her opinions were too strong to be destroyed by the Nazis; “Many hours passed, and still the Fuhrer’s ax could not take a single bite out of the trunk.” (Zusak 447). Max Vandenburg portrays Liesel’s words as a tree, sprouting from a tear of goodness. Her words’ power strengthens greatly, their manipulation and influence are so strong that Hitler cannot destroy them. Liesel’s words are a good sort of manipulation; they are so powerful that they have the ability to stop even the greatest word shaker. In The Book Thief, words used powerfully for goodness and manipulation have massive influence, yet one’s vocabulary can get more powerful still. Some words even have the ultimate power, the power to choose between life and death. Although it may seem less direct than a judge awarding a convict the death penalty or letting them off, words in Nazi Germany are the main reason why some people die, and some live. To start, people can be saved indirectly by words, being occupied by these beautiful works of literature can save people from the outside world quite literally. During a bomb raid over Munich, when the sirens are a slight bit late, Himmel Street is devastated. Everyone is killed, well – everyone but a little girl. Liesel Memmiger is writing her book in the basement of her house when the bombs strike Heaven Street; “I wonder what she was reading when the first bomb dropped from the rib cage of a plane” (Zusak 528). The fact that Liesel is writing in her basement is the only reason that she survives, her love for words give her the motive to write very early in the morning, in a cold, dark, German basement. It is in-direct, but the power of words is the reason that The Book Thief’s life is saved.

Words that Hans says to Max and his mother, although not meaning to, give Max the sanctuary in which he was able to live; “’He saved my life’…’He-if there’s anything you ever need’” (Zusak 179). During World War 1, Max’s father Eric saves Hans’s life by electing him to not go into battle, on the particular day that the entire battalion is killed. Riddled with survivor’s guilt, Hans offers Max anything that he ever needs, not knowing how much influence those words would have on to come. The simple, guilt laced words that Hans says, not meaning to be extremely influential, are powerful enough to save Max’s life from the Fuhrer.

The power of words as metaphors for creation is extremely important in the destruction, violence and death of Nazi Germany. The Nazi book burnings were intended to control the German people even more by restricting what they were allowed to read and write. Control of the mind could be seen as even more crushing than physical sanctions. When Liesel manages to save one book from the pyre of smoldering paper, she resists the power of Nazi regime and even this one small gesture is enough to prove that they do not completely control her life.

Max also uses the power of words, writing in this case, to rebel against the anti-Semetic Nazi Party and Hitler himself. He directly challenges the core ideals of Nazi rule when he transforms his copy of Mein Kampf into the story of his life called The Standover Man. Although Liesel and Max both initially seem powerless to resist Nazi rule, indeed they cannot physically escape from it, they both reclaim power and independence through books.