The Book Thief . . . The Power of Words

I must admit that I have finished The Book Thief.  I don't want to spoil the ending for those of you who haven't finished reading it, but I do have some thoughts that I would like to share.

On a less positive note, I did not like how the book ended, with "Death" "talking" to Liesel.  As I posted earlier, Death is an event that precedes eternity.  Zusak seems to drag out the event in the book in order to have a conversation.

Now on to some things that I did like.  (There are more, and if you are into analyzing writing style like me, reading this book just for the stylistic aspects is interesting.)

On page 243 "Death" talks about mystery and makes the point that often we know the ending of a story or mystery, but it is the machinations of how the plot unfolds that holds our interest.  I would have to say that as I have gotten older, I have gotten better at predicting how stories end, but plots still interest me.  I think that it is somewhat ironic that "Death's" statement is in the book at all; it's almost as if Zusak if putting all of his eggs in one basket.  We are going to have to want to read the book because we want to know how the events we know will happen unfold and occur.  This means that Zusak has to write in such a way that his plot will hold our interest.  I think that he succeeded.

One of my favorite parts of the book is on pages 520 and 521.  Earlier in the book, Max (the Jew that was hiding in Liesel's basement) writes her a book called The Word Shaker.  In it, Max writes about the power of words, and how Hitler used words to build up hatred and fear.  I'm going to quote some of 520 and 521 for those of you who do not have the book to illustrate how the power of words comes up again.  I also think that it is a good illustration of how Zusak writes.
       "She [Liesel] slid a book from the shelf and sat with it on the floor. . . . For a long time, she sat and saw.  She had seen her brother die with one eye open, one still in a dream.  She had said goodbye to her mother and imagined her lonely wait for a train back home to oblivion.  A woman of wire had laid herself down, her scream traveling through the street, till it fell sideways like a rolling coin starved of momentum.  A young man was hung by a rope made of Stalingrad snow.  She had watched a bomber pilot die in a metal case.  She had seen a Jewish man who had twice given her the most beautiful pages of her life marched to a concentration camp.  And at the center of all of it, she saw the Fuhrer shouting his words and passing them around.  These images were the world, and it stewed in her . . . . The words.  Why did they have to exist? Without words, the Fuhrer was nothing." 

For the rest of the quote, you will have to read the book, but there are a few things that this quote made me think of.
1)  The fact that Zusak is talking about the power of words in a book is potent in itself.  Without the words, there would not be this book, and since much of the book is very well written, one feels the impact of the words as one reads.  Therefore, as a reader, you feel the importance of words as Liesel is lamenting their power for evil in the hands of Hitler. 
2)  The imagery in this quote is amazing.  All of those events are described earlier in the book, but the way that Zusak depicts them on pages 520 and 521 I think capture the essence while at the same time doing so by pairing together objects that create a jarring effect.  Death and a dream, mother and oblivion, a scream and a coin, a hanging rope and snow, pilot (plane) and metal case, beauty and a concentration camp.  Personally, it makes me think about how ridiculous us humans can be to each other.  
3) It's somewhat ironic that Liesel is a book thief; she steals words. Throughout the book, the books that she steals/rescues fit into what she is experiencing.  Clearly, words have played a powerful part in her life, and end up saving her.  However, from this quote, I think that what Liesel would most dearly like to steal are the words out of Hitler's mouth so that he can never use them again.  The problem is that she can't, and even if she could, others could use them.  We are each responsible for how we use our own words.