“How did Markus Zusak employ features of the genre Magical Realism to convey his ideas about human existence in his novel The Book Thief?”

The Book Thief illustrates the power of words; negative and positive. This power is important because it can change the social perspective and hence exponentially encourage others to speak out and act freely to their beliefs.

Everything we know is only known to us relative to other things and we must therefore be able to take a step back and look at things from new lights.

This conveys Zusak’s ideas: The evil behavior of humans and importance of standing up and speaking out against it before it becomes too late.

Introduce the novel, key points, power of words and Zusak’s ideas

Introduce Magical Realism (a lie concealed among truths) and discuss it’s purpose (to challenge our preconceptions / expose an idea in a new light)

P1 Narrator Death -nievity -personification allows us to relate with Death and look at things from it’s perspective which is from a new light. This obscuring perspective is removed and we an now get a real look at Nazi Germany and life from a more neutral perspective (backed up by Death’s nievity) We can now see that the issue does not lie with death but with humans.

“I clearly rem em ber that m y breath was loud that day. I’m surprised the guards didn’t notice m e as they walked by.” At this point we really begin to treat Death as something at least close to a human figure; he is breathing, he is self concious, he is showing some kind of feeling – suprise and he is appearing alongside other humans – the guards.

“I am haunted by humans” said narrator Death in conclusion.

P2 Structure Foreshadowing (Dramatic irony) – exposes us to a new light directly. It shows that the structure is not ordinary – we are being presented with facts before the event occurs.

““You’ll pay for that at a later date, my friend” … It took him approximately five months to turn his statement into a true one.” Foreshadowing – Obviously important as it is bold. Interesting that it came from a character not the narrator. Second Part: There we go there’s the foreshadowing from narrator death.

“A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT RUDY STEINER He didn’t deserve to die the way he did.“

P3 Setting Molching – So believable yet not real shows how we can be tricked and manipulated by the negative power of words. Molching is presented to us as though it is a real town by describing it’s location in relativity to other real towns. This is just the same as how the power of words brought Hitler and the Nazi Party to power in Germany as the behavior became more and more normalised in Germany, until the mistreatment of Jews etc. became so normal that in relativeness, civilians believed in it and stood by.

“Quite a way beyond the outskirts of Munich, there was a town called Molching”

Normalised anti-Semitic behavior: “The Jew was filthy” – Referred to constantly as ‘the Jew’ – because it is not Max who defines his character but his Jewish background which discriminates him and is all that he is. Also note ‘the’ not ‘he’ because he isn’t a human he is an object and a disliked one too. All come about from the normalisation of this dislike so that in relativety to other Germans, people don’t feel as bad for what is happening and even like they are being kinder than others. The Nazi Germany setting is a perfect enhancement of the whole idea …

Conclusion

As Zusak says through character Liesel Meminger. “I have hated the words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right.”