NCEA 2.4 – genre investigation

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is a modern masterpiece of magical realism. Magical realism is a genre where most of the story is real or based in real events, but with some minor supernatural occurences that are either deemed normal in the world, or not recognised for the most part by the characters. It is commonly associated with South American authors and artists such as Salvador Dali, surrealist supreme, but others, such as Markus Zusak, also write in this style. This style is used by Zusak to great effect to show the themes of the novel, by using various methods of magical realism to enhance our opinions on the events and subsequent messages of the book.

One magically realistic aspect, and perhaps the biggest and most significant of The Book Thief is the narrator, Death. Before we know his true identity, he is introduced with the quote “First the colours, then the humans. That’s how I see things. or atleast, how I try”. This gives us the distinct impression that the narrator is not human, as humans would usually address other humans as people, not humans. This makes us think that he is perhaps not a human. This non-humanness allows him a unique and neutral perspective on the events portrayed in the book. When he says “They were going to Dachau, to concentrate” about the Jews being marched through Molching towards the labor camp Dachau, he says the comic line with such flippancy, and surrounded by no internal monologue or struggle. This neutrality on such dire topics allows the reader to make their own opinions on the themes of the novel, without pressure from a biased narrator.

Death’s telling of slightly off-kilter meta jokes about himself contributes to one of the themes in the book of the bizarreness of human behaviour. The line “One seat. two men, a short argument and me. It kills me sometimes, how people die” shows this as Death, the symbol of, well, death is killed by the humour of the circumstances in which some people die. The fact that Death can be surprised by death shows the idiosyncracy of human behaviour. The final lines of the novel sum this up the best. “A LAST NOTE FROM YOUR NARRATOR: I am haunted by humans. THE END.” This is made even more impactful by the realisation that Death is omnipotent, and has therefore experienced all of humanity that there is to observe, making his confusion about humans much more ominous.

Another of these themes expressed in the novel is the power of words, and the impact such an insignificant looking string of letters can cause to someone. This theme is expressed many times throughout the book, including the quote ” ‘My brother’s dead,’ said Michael Holtzapfel, and he could not have delivered the punch any better with his one usable fist. For Rosa staggered.”. This quote compares the impact of Michael’s words on Rosa as a punch, a physical act of violence. It personifies the words with acts of physical brutality and allows the reader to get the sense of the word’s power by association. “The injury of words. Yes, the brutality of words” is another quote used when Liesel is berrating Frau Hermann. It also uses the personification of a physical act of violence being dished out by the words to show the theme the power of words.

Markus Zusak uses all of these quotes and language features to great effect to ensure the underlying themes in The Book Thief of the power of words and the atypicality of the human condition, among others, are acknowledged by the reader. This use of magical realism allows the reader to investigate into an alternate reality differing from the accepted one about WWII and the Nazi regime. Ideas can thus be formed by the reader about the presented themes independently from the ‘facts’ about the event that we are fed in life, granting a road towards a personal opinion without bias. This is why Zusak wrote the novel in the style of magical realism, so that we can form our own opinion about the people of Nazi Germany and the events they witnessed and became part of during WWII.