At this point, I’m still reading The Book Thief, and the plot keeps getting thicker. Right now, Liesel is still in school, and her reading is continually getting better and stronger. A chapter or two before where I am, the Nazi party had a book burning ceremony to destroy all of the books that could be harmful to party ideals. On this list were books any written by Jewish authors or that featured a Jewish protagonist, or anything that portrayed Jews in a positive light. They were all piled, one on top of the other, forming a funeral pile of potential classics. And of course, Death is present there, at this pseudo-funeral, overseeing the goings-on.
All of the children are required to attend, on account of them being Hitler Youth, and these book burnings were the party’s way of “educating” both the young and the old on what should be kept as far as possible from your intellect. The entire town of Molching is there. Liesel is among them, and to her, seeing a pile of books the size of a small building that are destined for burning, is incomprehensible (it is to me too). So she stands there, watching the books go up in flames while listening to some big shot party leader ramble on about how this burning is for the good of all, and it’s all because the Fuhrer “cares about his people”.
After the burning when nearly all is reduced to ashes, Liesel finds her (adopted) father, Hans, but he’s distracted talking to someone. She ambles over the pile of still hot ashes that some workmen began to clean up. The gray cobblestone of the square where the burning occurred was visible, and on top of that lay three books, nearly unharmed. Feeling brave, Liesel runs to the piles and snags one of the books. After that, she runs back to her father, feeling terrified and exhilarated at the same time, and while walking home, the narrator says that she tucked the book into her jacket, hidden from her father’s eyes. But the entire time while she walked, she felt the book “burning” her, and with each passing second, it got hotter until it hurt her skin.
At first I thought that okay, the book is still hot from the fire – that’s normal. But as it started getting hotter, and I got a little confused. The book should be cooling down, right? I guess not. But think that I was looking at it from too much a common-sensical perspective. Now I think that the book burning Liesel’s skin was her own reaction to stealing it. She felt guilty, both about stealing the book and hiding it from her father, who was her greatest comfort and friend. She also must obviously feel terrified, since she just stole a banned book that was meant to have another fate. On top of that, she knew that someone had seen her take the book. The person who saw her take it was a quiet woman, who was always lost in her mind – she was never fully in reality. All of these emotions were boiling inside Liesel, and that heat transferred to her book, making her feel like she was about to burn to death.
I am reading this book after I indulge in my first John Green book. I like how you took us through your thought process here at then end figuring out the layer between literal and figurative. Thank you for that!
ReplyDeleteI really want to read this book now! I’ve heard such good things about it from this blog, and also from other people outside of class. I thought the inclusion of Death was really symbolic. It not only represents the actual death present during this time period, but also the death of potential--they’re losing knowledge and therefore losing the opportunities they might have in the future to do great things. I want to know more about how the book burns into her skin. I understand that it’s her guilt that makes it feel hot, but why does she feel so guilty? Is it just because the books were banned, or is it for some other reason? I’m really attached to books, and I don’t understand why anyone would ever feel the need to ban them. I get that some books have content that isn’t appropriate for younger audiences, but if that’s the reason they’re being banned, why not just prevent younger kids from reading them? Books that have been banned are books that have a lot of truth in them, and I think that part of the reason people ban them is because they want to prevent others from learning about the real world. In the case of one of John Green’s books (Looking for Alaska), it was banned from some schools because it referenced sex. The thing is, though, that it’s a book about teenagers written for teenagers, and that’s realistically what some teenagers talk about. By banning that book, they erased a realistic representation of teenagers, and gained more control over the next generation. It’s not fair to manipulate people by blocking them off from new ideas, or controversial ideas, because it helps them develop ideas of their own and become more aware of their society and gain the power to change the things wrong with it.
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