Group members: Clarence, Zhu Cheng, Nicholas, Samuel, Benedict, Jian Kai
Audio Recording:
Illustrations by Jian Kai
Jian Kai's Notes
Samuel's Notes:Seeing things in coloursà referring to emotions, reflect mood, atmosphere, perception through the five senses?
“First the colours. Then the humans. That’s usually how I see things.”
First two lines of the book. Death gives us a glimpse of how he view things and what he thinks about.
Coloured perspectives, colours are symbolic, can represent different stuff
“When he turned the light on in the small, callous washroom that night, Liesel observed the strangeness of her foster father’s eyes. They were made of kindness, and silver. Like soft silver, melting. Liesel, upon seeing those eyes, understood that Hans Hubermann was worth a lot.”
Description of Hans Hubermann, coloured perspectives, it is not cold hard, solid silver, it is the runny kind, the liquid silver,transcendent, not fixed, swirling, fluid, dynamic, flowing around, precious metal, its like not as, flashy as gold, not dull as bronze, just silver, sagacity, wisdom, old age
“She possessed the unique ability to aggravate almost anyone she ever met. But she did love Liesel Meminger. Her way of showing it just happened to be strange. It involved bashing her with wooden spoon and words at various intervals.”
Description of Rosa Hubermann, Encapsulates the relationship between her and Liesel.
“He was the crazy one who had painted himself black and defeated the world. She was the book thief without words.”
Interesting juxtaposition between Rudy and Liesel from Death’s narration. Occurs after Liesel destroyed Luke. Talk about characterization, it is as if both complement each other in their ‘idiosyncrasies’, hence deep friendship? Interesting dichotomy between colours and words
“When Liesel left that day, she said something with great uneasiness. In translation, two giant words were struggled with, carried on her shoulder, and dropped as a bungling pair at Ilsa Hermann’s feet. They fell off sideways as the girl veered with them and could no longer sustain their weight. Together, they sat on the floor, large and loud clumsy. Two giant words: I am sorry.”
Vivid portrayal of the scene after Ilsa Hermann reveals that she had lost her son. You could imagine Liesel looking down, eyes averting the gaze of Ilsa Hermann, as well as the progression of the words, the words becomes dynamic, from thoughts, burden that must be carried, to being dropped from her mouth.
“Once, words had rendered Liesel useless, but now, when she sat on the floor, with the mayor’s wife at her husband’s desk, she felt an innate sense of power. It happened every times she deciphered a new word or pieced together a sentence.”
The power of words in the hands of the book thief. Empowerment by literacy, by fluency in a language, the ability to articulate one’s thoughts etc, communication.
“Max Vandenburg promised that he would never sleep in Liesel’s room again. What was he thinking that first night? The very idea of it mortified him. He rationalized that he was so bewildered upon his arrival that he allowed such a thing. The basement was the only place for him as far as he was concerned. Forget the cold and the loneliness. He was a Jew, and if there was one place he was destined to exist, it was a basement or any other such hidden venue of survival.”
The scene when Max Vandenburg awakes from his deep slumber. Welcome to the Jewish mentality, alienation, isolation, rejection, the fact that he allowed himself to share a room with another human being, zzz he dehumanizes himself, notion of destiny and fate, the life of a Jewish fugitive, hiding from society.
“Sometimes there was humour in Max Vandenburg’s voice, though its physicality was like friction- like a stone being gently rubbed across a large rock. It was deep in places and scratched apart in others, sometimes breaking off altogether. It was deepest in reflection, and broken off at the end of a joke or a statement of self-deprecation.”
Max recounts his Jewish childhood to Papa and Liesel. Gives quality, texture to sound, to Max’s voice. Interesting stone imagery, association with sheer grit, rawness of experience, survivor’s experience zzz.
“Of course, I’m being rude. I’m spoiling the ending, not only of the entire book, but of this particular piece of it. I have given you two events in advance, because I don’t have much interest in building mystery. Mystery bores me. It chores me. I know what happens and so do you. It’s the machinations that wheel us there that aggravate, perplex, interest, and astound me.”
After Death reveals that Rudy dies at the end and Liesel would kiss his bomb-hit lips. For Death, since he knows all about the end result, he is more interested in the process that leads up to the result. Indirectly, the reader becomes less impatient with knowing what is going to happen and all that speculative ‘what ifs’, rather focusing more on the what the author wants to tell the reader, the events that lead up to it, hence it is sort of getting the reader to be more interested, pay more attention to the ‘process’. reader becomes more interested, more engaged with the text.
Pg 254
Betrayed by your own nation
“I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”
Last line of the Book Thief by Liesel.
Provokes the reader the think about the meaning of words, the use of words in our lives. What’s the purpose of words, is it to form a language, a means to communicate and express oneself to others? For example, in the context of Nazi Germany, a totalitarian regime, words are controlled, words are suppressed, words become tools for brainwashing, i.e. Heil Hitler. Imagine a world without words, everyone is unable to understand each other, cannot work together, everyone like trying frantically to use body language, hand gestures lol. Hence, words are instrumental in building relationships with others, that’s why words are a sort of love-hate affair, because words can bring comfort, can bring joy, but can also bring grief, unhappiness and serve to destroy. In the case of Liesel, words helped her open up to others and forge friendships with others, especially If you imagine being torn away from your natural mother and forced to live with foster parents in an alien place. That she was illiterate, that she was in need of words helped forged an extremely close relationship between her and her father as Papa helped her become proficient in words by reading with her. Words in the form of dialogue, in the form of thoughts, helped her build confidence, she felt empowered by knowledge as everyone does. Max used words to express his gratitude for her. People were comforted by her reading while huddle together in air raid shelters during air raids.
“I am haunted by humans.”
Last line of the bookà reveals dark side of humans?
