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

Markus Zusak conveys his ideas about the obscuring social perspective we use to look at and consequently react to actions within society in his novel, The Book Thief. Zusak does this by employing features of the genre Magical Realism to expose us to what we may have otherwise not apprehended. This being that everything we know, and it’s rightfulness and fairness, we can only compare in relativity to other things – such as comparative to the way the world works, society and other humans behavior. Nazi Germany is a perfect example of this comparability gone wrong where people are surrounded by anti-Semitic and hateful behavior, society and words. As a result, civilians have only got this behavior to compare their own against as well as build and grow their values around. Furthermore, this brings out Zusak’s ideas around the positive and negative power of words which will be explored throughout this essay through Zusak’s use of narration, setting and structure.

Magical Realism is the genre where a realistic story is presented to it’s audience with one fictional aspect. Like a lie smuggled among the truth, a common purpose of Magical Realism is to alter reality exposing the audience to a different aspect or perspective. This in turn can result in the audience challenging their preconceptions as they struggle to distinguish what is true and what is false.

In The Book Thief, Markus Zusak exposes readers to the obscuring social perspective we use to analyse and react to social situations with through narration. Zusak does this by creating Death as a character, personifying it and using it as a narrator. This application of Death is a key fictional feature of this magical realism piece. “I clearly remember that my breath was loud that day. I’m surprised the guards didn’t notice me as they walked by.” narrated Death early on in the novel. At this point we begin to treat Death as something at least close to a human figure; he is breathing like a human, he is self conscious like a human, he is showing some kind of feeling like a human, surprise, and he is appearing alongside other humans. This is all personification of Death which normalises ‘him’ and allows us to build trust in what is now becoming ‘his’ accepted perspective of things. Fundamentally we still understand that while Death as a character acts like a human, he is still a work of fiction. “I walked in, loosened his soul, and carried it gently away.” stated Death. The whole concept of souls and the removal of souls is fictional – hence the differing perspective Death provides as a narrator and hence the great power and ‘overview’ Death has of the non-fictional humans. To summarise, because of the way Zusak personifies Death we build a lot of trust in Death and ‘his’ perspective as well as find ‘him’ easy to relate with. But because of Death’s removal from normality and his over-viewing ability from his fictional position, he is not affected by the obscuring social perspective that humans have. He is simply not a human. This means that as a narrator, he can expose us to the workings of society at this time, the way that people became against their own will a part of Nazi Germany and the extreme lengths that humans will go to in order to protect themselves and conform to society. Overall, Death’s narration illustrates the power of words and how, using Nazi Germany as the example, one man’s words can infiltrate and corrupt society impacting the whole globe.

“Quite a way beyond the outskirts of Munich, there was a town called Molching”. Despite Molching being the setting for most of Markus Zusak’s novel The Book Thief, this statement is untrue. Molching does not exist. Zusak is blatantly lying to readers and readers are blatantly believing him. The belief is mostly down to the way that Molching’s location is described; in relativity to another real location – Munich. This, again, conveys Zusak’s idea of the power of words. Readers are deceived, believing in Molching and consequently all of the ideas and emotions associated with it later in the book – just like how the ideas of Nazi Germany built up and rose. That is by exploiting things relative to wider society at the time. Take Rudy’s father, Alex Steiner for example who “did not hate the Jews, or anyone else for that matter … Secretly, though, he couldn’t help feeling a percentage of relief (or worse—gladness!) when Jewish shop owners were put out of business”. This portrays the disgruntlement towards Jews already around in this period, which Hitler and the Nazi Party exploit. Overall the use of magical realism in setting exposes to readers how available and oblivious we are to manipulation. Once again we are unaware of the obscuring social perspective that blinds us from realising how we as humans are being exploited. Furthermore the settings use exposes the power of words – the key tool used to manipulate humans.

Markus Zusak’s, The Book Thief, applies foreshadowing as a part of it’s structure to outline the obscuring social perspective humans use. Furthermore, this reveals the true power of words which are used to build up and drive society and the ideal social perspective that comes with it. An example of Foreshadowing is when narrator Death states: “A SMALL ANNOUNCEMENT ABOUT RUDY STEINER He didn’t deserve to die the way he did.” This use of foreshadowing is a little oxymoronic. Narrator Death is claiming a huge statement: the death of a main character and then enhancing this with block capitals and bold text. But what Death states is supposedly “a small announcement” and is not actually about the death of Rudy but about a circumstance surrounding his death. Zusak does this as he acknowledges that this death would generally be a big part of the novel but chooses instead to address what would be considered less important. By only acknowledging this less important feature of Rudy’s death, Zusak is exposing us to the obscuring social perspective we use to react to social situations. This highlights to readers how they have again been manipulated by their obscuring social perspective. Readers will now be able to consider the fairness of an innocent young boy with a long life ahead of him being deliberately killed by society which they may otherwise have not picked up on. This illustrates the power of words from a different aspect. It illustrates how just a few words in “a small announcement” can be used to reveal such a huge fault in society; our obscuring social perspective.

In conclusion, Markus Zusak conveys his ideas about human existence in his novel The Book Thief using features of the genre, Magical Realism. These ideas are exposed to us through Magical Realism using narration (with fictional Death), setting (with the non-existent Molching) and structure (with foreshadowing opposing the real direction of time, being applied throughout the novel). All of this Magical Realism highlights to readers; the obscuring social perspective we use to analyse and react to social situations with, how we can only compare things in relativity to other things and the power of words. These ideas could simply not have come about were it not for the Magical Realism twist. This ‘twist’ forces readers to alter their perspective from the standard obscuring social perspective which in turn brings to light these ideas. As a matter of fact, it particularly highlights the obscuring social perspective we were using.

Overall, it is vitally important that we take in Zusak’s warning to readers. There is an obscuring social perspective we look at things with. We aren’t afraid to turn a blind eye or even support a movement if it benefits us individually. We are all susceptible to bad words slowly fueling a fire of evil – a prime example being Nazi Germany which is where Zusak has set his whole novel. This is a warning we cannot ignore. We must address words of hate – we can not allow even small fires to burn. Because the minute the wind gets up, the minute the hate boils over, a lot of damage will be done. Mark my words, New Zealand is no ‘safe haven’ from the power and quite frankly destruction of words either. Look at Christchurch on the 15th March this year. So much hate from so much words for so little reason.